Board of Education Regular Meeting 3/22/21

001please join me in participating in a moment of silence in honor of control thank you next is uh thank you very much resolution whereas gloria reyes board of education president for madison metropolitan school district has generously served on the board since 2018 one of these years as a board member and two as the president whereas gloria reyes's leadership has been has served as a genuine has served as a genuine district collaborator and partner advocating for equitable practices and diversity and inclusion policies and programs that better serve students families and staff of color whereas gloria's commitment to overseeing and implementing the intersectional safe and welcoming schools approach which supports the academic and social emotional growth of our students has been unwavering and unwavering whereas gloria's steadfast leadership was also instrumental in the passage of the historic

0022020 referendum which will have a profound legacy on the madison community for future generations by improving and creating equitable learning environments now therefore be it resolved that the madison metropolitan school district board of education recognizes and thanks gloria reyes for her inspiring leadership unique contributions and true dedication to mmsd schools her work will continue to leave a lasting positive impact in our student in our schools for our students our families and the community be it further resolved that this statement be permanently imprinted in the board of education minutes for the regular meeting of march 22nd 2021. thank you gloria thank you thank you for leaving that resolution i want to thank the school board members who i have served with over this my term it has been amazing to work with each and every one

003of you we've been through some challenging times together and um we were able to overcome the many challenges that have faced us and um we've done it with just so much compassion um resiliency and it's just been an honor to serve each and every one of you um i am so honored that i was able to um be a part of hiring uh dr jenkins um who i'm so confident in his leadership in moving our district forward um it has been a pleasure to work with our leadership team and administration um they work hard every day i've seen it firsthand in our staff our teachers who work hard every day not to ensure that [Music] they are providing safe spaces and learning opportunities for our children um and you know finally just want to thank

004the voters who came out in 2018 who came out to support me it was an amazing moment for me and appreciate the confidence of this community um and that they had in me in leading the school district and also to each and every one of you who have um really stood behind me and supported my leadership i trusted you to make some really hard and difficult decisions um and um finally barb osborne who's behind the scenes who really helped transition me into the board and he has helped me significantly so it's been a pleasure serving this community in this capacity and i look forward to all the great things that you all accomplish all right um written registrations we have there were 25 written statements submitted for this meeting please see the summary goal we

005have 13 in support of uh equitable fundraising and district allocated resources district-wide two in support of the proposed expansion of the plan for the new pool at west high school we have eight opposed to the proposed changes to the employee handbook related to the surplus and layoff language and three in support of the proposed recommended changes and do we have any public advances um whenever you're ready brother whenever you're ready you can turn on your video and your mic please hi good good evening my name is brenda brown and i am a longtime member of the city of madison and a mother of five children that attended all over the academic environment institutions here in madison at all age levels i'm wanting to recommend darlene hancock for the renaming of madison memorial high school and

006candidly i just got the information 30 minutes ago so i'm not as organized as i would like i also understood that there may be a possibility of submitting the nomination and writing otherwise i would just speak off the top of my head which may not be the most effective but what is the what are the possibilities brenda tonight marks the uh the start of the 30-day timeline for us to ask for written submissions of proposals everything will be on the website tomorrow everything including the forum where to do it how to do it and the criteria so we'll have another month to get all the proposals all right did you want me at all let's speak at all why i want to nominate her in brief form or just get the form off the line

007and get that completed yeah you can go ahead and just submit it that would be great all right so then i'm done here tonight thank you so much all right well thank you all for having me and i'll look for the form thank you so much bye-bye right now we're ready whenever you want to open your video and your camera and your audio would are you working on your video thank and you're ready sh hi can you hear us hello brenda haskins i'm here good thank you okay can you turn on your video it tells me you've stopped it so you want to turn it on you can turn it on okay thank you thank you all right thank you hello dr jenkins and the board of education members my name is brenda haskins i'm

008an east graduate mom of la follette high school grad and lafollette high school current student and while all of us parents in the city of madison want the best for our kids and i understand the desires of the parents at western memorial to have increased funding for their students this is about fairness and i'm speaking in opposition to west's new proposal or additional proposal for extra fundraising in kelly ruppel's memo to the board today it notes that projects that bring in millions of dollars to one or two schools and one geographic side of the district may not be in alignment with the donation policy or equity vision of our district may not i think you can be a little stronger than that definitely not and yes east got 10 million dollars of construction for a

009theater and field house and that's fantastic because as this memo states east's a low-income school in a low-income neighborhood so is la follette and la phallic kids are deserving of more the board has set aside five million but that's going to be shared by three schools that's not going to lafall it and with the tens of millions that are going to west and memorial something less than five million thrown at la follette is really peanuts last month a bunch of the followed parents asked for an audit among other things of course is offered at the four high schools and we haven't received those yet and i want to know when we can expect it the memo from kelly goes on to say that the board's educational equity policy defines equity as the intentional distribution of

010district resources among schools students and staff based on what each needs to achieve universal goals assuming those goals are reading writing and arithmetic our kids want that and need that as well as ap classes theater and athletics title 1 funds for math and reading end after 8th grade how many 9th graders are grade ready at each of the schools i'll bet there's a lot more at la follette that are not grade ready how about intentionally throwing a reading specialist or math specialist at la follette and improving the feeder schools to catch the discrepancies in math and reading scores sooner and how about doing that without taking away ability for our students to also have ap classes i really want to talk about fees and another area where the board can be intentionally uh distributing fees

011waiving fees is an easy place right two-thirds two-thirds of la follette kids are free or reduced lunch when those fees are waived the district should intentionally distribute money to make up for those loss lafollettes should receive those fees that we're not getting from the parents of kids from the district when fees for art classes and athletics classes are waived year after year after year our programs suffer the district should intentionally distribute those waived resources back to lafallet so the burden to supply program funds doesn't fall on the families of only one-third of our students we are a low-income school that's why we need uh attention just the way east needed attention and the the reason we can't fundraise ourselves is because our fundraising dollars go for food and other supports that our kids need this

012board is not responsible for the inequities that currently exist i'm a lifelong madison resident i'm a lifelong east side resident i get that but this board by continuing to approve millions for two west side schools and throwing peanuts at la follette has to escape accept responsibility for growing the inequity intentionally thank you for your time is that me i'm here yes thank you bye sorry i have to turn up my volume i hear myself but not you can you hear me yes great how are you all thank you for uh taking the time this evening i'm here um as a a long time uh teacher in madison i'm proudly in my third decade my name is kerry matabila i'm speaking to it against the proposed unilateral changes to the mmsd handbook many will speak tonight

013and you've received emails and comments from many members educators in the district on their concerns of the impact of voting unilaterally to change a handbook which up to this point has been collectively built by employees but tonight i really hope to communicate to the msb board something else i hope to communicate the deep and genuine investment that we at mti your educators have to support and retain our colleagues staff of color and all units as project lead for the mti centers grant i'm here speaking tonight to counter the false narrative that the union is the problem unto assertion that you need to pull us along or make us see i'm here to show you that your teachers through their union are actively and strategically engage in ongoing meaningful social and racial justice work at every

014level madison teachers incorporated the representative body of the mmsd staff is committed to equity including social and racial justice in all its forms in its mission statement the board asserts unequivocal support for the sphere and the work of anti-racism within the district and our larger madison community we believe the public schools have a moral responsibility to provide quality education broad and equitable in its nature to students with no exception exclusion and disparities those are our stated beliefs we understand we have often shor fell short of these ideals and we work and stand with our students families and communities dedicated to the work of dismantling this system we understand and assert this work does not and cannot reside in one action structure or change rather requires genuine ongoing commitment to first listen then work to become

015the organization that supports our members as such as the project lead for the mti centers project the collaboration to ensure retention and success we are entering our fifth year of deep analysis and commitment to this work it is part of our larger strategy to analyze why we're losing our staff and how to retain them and our research shows key elements the number one reason our research shows through lpi and through the pen institute are that our staff does not feel supported we have hired the highest number of staff of color in the last six years in the teachers unit yet we have not impacted our density it is not through surplus and layoff that we're losing our staff of color it is by lack of support um and lack of feeling belonging the union takes

016that very seriously we have entered into a collaboration that we have um supported over one thousand i think today that's up to twelve hundred of our union members involved in this work to build their skills their capacity their knowledge of what it means to be an anti-racist educator what it means to be an anti-racist union member we are deeply invested in this work and we would love for you to come back and collaborate with us we are here we are we are not going anywhere we believe this work is key to our role in the union you'll see that we understand language matters in our mission statement in the equity and diversity statement in the united change statement and in the statement for anti-racism all issued by our leadership you'll see we understand representation matters

017we have changed our leadership structure to elevate guaranteed representation for our staff of color faculty reps for equity and diversity at every single building elevating 70 new leaders in our structure to center equity and diversity and we have engaged in workshops engaging with 40 new collaboratives in in the community around the work of equity and social justice and racial justice we have 30 book groups 20 saturday sessions our teachers meet on saturdays from 10 and until 2 a once a month um we've sponsored over 15 community events in the last two years and we show 50 of our participants return your teachers through their union are deeply engaged in this work this is not the right move to unilaterally change the hamburg and end the collaborative nature that we have and possess we show rating

018of support of 100 support for this work from people that are participating they think this is the work of our union and so i just end with saying that uh we don't have to do this now we don't have to do this in this way your union is here and ready to work with you on creating the collaborative space in which we will become the two organizations that will retain support and believe in our staff of color we have extended the grant for another fifth year i'm very proud of the work we're doing and i hope that you will see this um as the evidence that we are not the problem we are actually here doing the work with you deeply engaged invested in the work of anti-racism invested in creating organizations that will attract

019retain and support a staff of color please vote against the unilateral changes and and continue our tradition of collaboration around the employee handbook that makes us a stronger district for all of the students we serve thank you all for the work that you do i'd like to thank also particularly board member uh nicki van muelen and uh president reyes for reaching out to me and giving me time and i invite any of you to reach out to me and sit down and hear deep um the deep research involved in this grant thank you for your the next time is kim kaon when you are ready you can begin barb we can't hear you really well it's really low the volume can you hear me oh did you call me yes okay yes as a teacher

020who has worked in mmsd for more than 20 years i know in the past mmsd and mti have worked together and always reached consensus to collaboratively in reserve outstanding issues i believe that when teachers and other ministers work together good things happen for our students i had had i had felt deep respect and trust in our new superintendent when dr jenkins appeared at several staff and community zone meetings with empty representatives and promised a collaboration with mti as an mms teacher i could not help but feel betrayed and deeply wounded when i heard that mms abruptly changed the direction from the agreement to the mti last year and now is asking the board to impose unilateral handbook change on the surprising layer of language policy at today's meeting i'm concerned why mmsd is in such

021a rush on such critical issues as employees job protections by unilaterally changing the handbook in a way that gives the donation complete authority over surplus and layoff decisions effectively eliminating seniority and any teacher input it is disappointing that mmsd is trying to just rush through this when the students and the community are facing more important issues like school reopening and the hidden camera investigation in its high school it feels like the district is abruptly bringing up the surplus and level issues in order to distract our attention from the hidden camera investigation and threaten and silence our spoken staff by removing the language of seniority the automators can put all the employees under their control effectively blocking teacher voices and allowing the administrative favoritism discrimination and retaliation against teachers who speak out it will also create

022labor tension among staff creating competition not collaboration if mms truly cares about attracting and retaining teachers of color they should put their efforts on planning how to support them and creating clear objective criteria on surpluses as a minority myself i know that it is not the seniority but how the administrator supports the staff when a minority staff decides to leave the job i have personally heard from a teacher of color who decide to leave msd just after teaching one semester because she couldn't stand the atmosphere of the school and could not find anyone who supported her msc administrators say they want to remove seniority language from the handbook to attract and retain teachers of color but in fact what they really want is to gain their solar authority in schools mms is presenting the rubric

023of teacher evaluation with the heavyweight on the rating for culturally responsible practices and their zero but these measures can be extremely subjective and give the principals the authority to use their bias against teachers who object or challenge their decisions for example i have had two very different evaluations from two different supervisors one with the very high scores and the other with the extremely low scores the supervisor who gave me the extremely low scores did not provide any evidence for evaluation her evaluation was solely based on her bias prejudice and judgmental view i have been unfairly treated and bullied by my supervisor numerous times but had not found any place i could get help without seniority as an older minority teacher i would suffer throughout my years at mmst from anxiety stress frustration humiliation and negative

024feelings let alone the long-term health effects caused by these mental distresses i would rather devote my time and energy working for my students then worry about my job security more than anything else the proposed challenge changes allowing for teachers to be laid off with only 30 days notice are unthinkable in the public education system i'm worried that this will not only lead to increased increased favoritism discrimination and tiring of staff they speak out about speak out but also kill the employees more real how can teachers proudly devote themselves to our students in this kind of environment in addition i would like to ask the boe to please restore the survey given to each teacher every year to evaluate their supervisor mms staff used to have this survey every year but at some point it mysteriously

025disappeared it is not fair that only the principals can evaluate the teachers and not vice versa i want to you to value our teachers the ones who work for our students in the front line the admissions job should be supporting teachers not dominating or controlling them i support mti and believe that mti does represent what is best for its workers students families and communities please direct the district to meet with mti and include the voice of our teachers thank you very much [Music] thank you for having me uh good evening board and dr jenkins and everyone here i'm michael jones and as president-elect of mti i'm appreciative of the chance to speak tonight i'm not speaking however in regards to the specific proposed handbook changes i'm obviously not in favor of them and i've spoken

026to that aspect to you many of you individually and uh to our to the handbook committee in the process but i'm also speaking about the flawed process that brought us here tonight um i will not speak on them again because i believe the outcome has already been determined and i'd prefer might to use my time discussing the past and future rather than the present i've been part of many joint mmsd mti ventures on topics ranging from the handbook to safety protocols to the shared goal of supporting and retaining new educators especially our colleagues of color some of these collaborations involved in us meeting first and crafting plans together some of these collaborations involved mmsd developing their own plans and not sharing these plans or their rationale with mti until they're going right in front of

027the board the next week the handbook process for the past year tr trended towards the latter it would be easy for me to point that blame at particular people in the process but doing so would not get me what i want and what i believe our employees students and families deserve that we all need to do better as a leader with nti i will own the fact that i have seen our relationship so far as transactional if something was going to negatively impact the children under my care the colleagues in my work and our community then only then would i reach out to you to raise health but all relationships are a two-way street and sometimes it felt like mti would only be contacted by board members during election season this is not a healthy

028relationship not for those of us so intensely involved in the day-to-day work of planning and executing the work of educating our children but not as it's not healthy for the children and families we serve for the relationship only engenders heated actions and reactions and not a better understanding of each other as human beings so i'm just gonna speaks quickly that i'm willing to ask why we haven't had more board of education members at our mti leadership and committee meetings if you're willing to ask why mti members are given aren't given space at board meetings to hold discussions about our ongoing work instead of relying on the testimony of central staff office staff only i'm willing to push my colleagues in exploring the racism in our system our curriculum and our own practices as long as

029you're also willing to openly and honestly willing to push your own administrators when nti members speak up on racist policies and protocols that are pushed by the same administrators who will now be in charge of determining their employees cultural competencies i'm willing to fight back on the characterization that the board of education and administrators are only interested in the financial or political bottom line if you're willing to fight back that mti members are racist obstructionist bullies hell bent on the status quo i know we can do we can do better together you know we can do better together and i hope we will plan on doing so in the future thank you michael sure i got a message from somebody saying that they can't hear what's happening in this room and i'm concerned that because

030people can't actually be physically in the room this could be considered an illegal meeting if people can't hear it i think we we can hear you all very soft very far away i don't know but i am checking in with our communications people and he's saying that they can hear us it's also pretty soft so um let's have um before we start let's have um each one of us save um something into the mic and we'll check in with our communications person on the other side to make sure that they can hear us i'll let you know barb being here ready okay um can you hear me yes no i'm asking barbara oh thanks sorry i think because of the mask and there's something with the volume last the last meeting was it was much

031better than now and julie i hear i heard julius listening that it's all so soft and that my volume is all the way up i want to confirm that they can hear you on youtube they're saying it's light that they can hear you and you haven't been speaking much can they say yes yes they can see you yes i know you don't have it here but they can see you yeah i'm going to switch this back from the high powered one you get a little power and i'll see if that improves the situation but you can go ahead because we are plugged in okay um yeah i can hear you it's just too a little bit soft yes i think it's better okay um we're just gonna have to speak up louder um can you

032say something yes it's much much better now remember it's it's also capturing every single shuffling of paper and pen drop and needle drop but it's much better okay um okay uh ananda can you hear me yes can you hear me yes much better thank you yes um being that there were some technical difficulties the requests that our votes we will call vote so that way people can hear the difference between who's voting because originally it was hard to hear and hard to see i have a hard time when i watch a meeting with the plexiglass seeing it with visual issues so i was wondering if that could be done okay thank you is that acceptable yes thank you can you hear me ananda amanda can you hear me yes sorry yeah it's much better chris

033thank you uh tess fernando yes thank you and this is the last one thank you yes it's much better thank you so much barb for working this through thank you all right move on to the next item on the agenda and that's the approval of minutes i move that the board of education approved the minutes from the regular meeting dated february 22nd 2021 nikki second any discussion okay can we get a world cup world cup hey next on to board president's announcements uh if you want to take your mascot you are behind this the flex glass okay um i would like to officially announce uh this is a process um beginning for the renaming of memorial high school i would like to officially announce that the process has begun before the renaming of james max

034memorial high school the superintendent received a proposal last fall to rename the school in honor of valvolia phillips bell phillips that proposal was submitted by maya berry and is attached to the agenda for this meeting which you can find by looking on board docs or on by clicking the link in the video description on youtube this announcement officially begins the 30-day timeline allowing for additional proposals to be submitted for consideration any proposal submitted must fulfill the criteria laid out by our board policy number 6700 proposal for renaming a mmsd building which can be found on the district's website and boarders the board of education will begin its role which is to select 12 members from the community to be part of the ad hoc remaining committee including a chairperson on board action to create this

035ad hoc committee is slated for the april 26 2021 forever board meeting thank you maya for your proposal we look forward to working through the process with the community to rename memorial high school la palette alum kristen jones publishes a book for young people with special needs while recovering from a reconstructive operation in 2017 lavala high school alumni kristen jones decided she wanted to empower young people through visual storytelling publishing a children's book about living with spina bifida called wonderfully made kristin explains that her motivation for writing this book was to show children that their disability for medical condition does not define them as a person the book which features kristen as the main character is a story about perseverance empathy and determination the board recognizes that and greatly appreciates christian's compassion and innovative approach

036to empowering youth with medical conditions and disabilities through her children's book thank you kristen hey all right um next um move on to superintendent's announcements and reports dr jenkins okay chair rest and other members of the board i'm very excited tonight to be joined by mrs michelle nipple and other members of our district staff as we're gonna give clear examples of black excellence in our district and what it actually means as they show off their examples when i came back to madison one of the things that excited me was the whole notion that as a district we had set as a goal that black children and youth would excel here in madison and i always ask the question as i do with anti-racism what does this look like what does it feel like how are

037students being impacted how are families being impacted how will our community be impacted with this whole idea of black excellence i think miss nichols and the rest of the team members tonight are going to get clear examples of how we're moving in this direction we know that we're on the journey we're not there yet totally but we're definitely moving forward so at this time i'm going to have miss nipple and our team start with examples of black excellence in our district thank you dr jenkins um barb would you be able to pull up the um slideshow i'm hoping so okay hmm thank you barb and if there's um there may be a couple of members um of the team who are planning to present tonight still in the waiting room um all right so as

038we get ready to open just as a reminder of michelle nichols executive director of equity and engagement and this presentation tonight will provide an update on several efforts taking place across departments and throughout our district to uplift our commitment to black excellence in mmsd next slide so tonight you're going to get a spotlight from my colleagues about the work they are undertaking often under the radar to address systemic issues that hinder black excellence in our district and what i believe you will hear tonight is that there is important work underway to create the conditions for black excellence to take hold so that all of our students will excel and also thrive now as a reminder when we started black excellence a couple of years ago we were driven by our student data and as i

039began meeting with parents and community members about what it would take to make black excellence achievable in mmsd they pointed out human resources professional learning curriculum supporting our advanced learners building respectful trusting relationships with families and supporting our students directly with affirming experiences about who they are so tonight's spotlight has invited some of my colleagues here to bring voice to the work that is happening in the district this presentation is not an exhaustive exhaustive list of all things happening but a spotlight on the areas that have continued to be the most concern black excellence is dependent on our district's anti-racist actions and a commitment to deliver an equitable excellent education for all students we need these actions at every level of the system and i think you'll get a glimpse of some of the work

040that we are embarking upon tonight we have divided this presentation into three sections the first area will focus on what efforts we are taking directly impacting staff the second is on more of our instructional moves and then the third section will spotlight how we're uplifting our partnerships and collaborations with families community organizations and we will wrap up with a special spotlight on black girl magic next slide as a quick reminder our strategic framework has three goals these three goals embody the district's equity policy which calls out targeted universalism the first two goals are universal we want all children to be on track to graduate college career and community ready and we want the district to be a place where children staff and families thrive goal three is of course our targeted goal excuse me it

041calls out our african-american students because they have been historically underserved by our district and we know this is true for many of our students of color that goal three is where we started goal three is also tied to academic metrics and one climate and culture metric that we should be reporting on at least annually well due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic and our uh our starting of this school year virtually tonight's update will not include any of those academic metrics tied to goal three because we're still working through the academic data but as soon as we are able to um gather our data at the end of this school year we will calibrate and then align our actions moving forward next slide many of you have seen this slide before this slide really just brings

042to light that we have always led black excellence with a clear statement about beliefs and mindsets and beliefs and mindsets are important because we know that in order to change practice and actions you must constantly be examining and interrogating and challenging your beliefs and mindsets barb is everything okay all right cool thank you no worries uh and then furthermore black excellence um also called out from the very beginning a commitment to create spaces for our black staff our families our students to bring their experiences their ideas their intelligence their creativity their credibility their lived experiences to the table to actually help us improve our district and to continue to strive for excellence next slide these word associations help tap into the variety of ways our educators and district staff think about and describe black excellence

043i'd bring this back up tonight because our goal has been to amplify many of these ideas and aspirations to make black excellence more than a catchphrase i encourage you to just scan the words on this screen and find those that really resonate with you as we get ready to go into our first section uh one of the things that we know is common um in terms of people's association with black excellence is what are we actually doing to bring in black teachers and to support the black teachers that we have so i'm gonna now hand over um this next section of the presentation to a couple of my colleagues and um and then we will pause after our um first section naja hello hello hello hey so i'm nadja thompson and i'm proud barb next

044slide please before i get started yeah this is it um so hello so i'm nazia thompson i'm proud to lead some of the recruitment and engagement work out of the office of human resources so this slide shows our incremental improvement over the last seven years in hiring staff of color and black teachers the dark blue bar line is a staff of color and includes teachers and other support staff the light blue bar line is our white staff over the same period so as you can see there are stark differences and we have a long way to go to mirror the racial demographics of our student body next slide barb so one of the strategies we have taken to build pipelines and attract black teachers to msc is establishing connections with historically black colleges and universities

045this is a photo of me at florida a m university last spring right before all educational institutions switched to virtual learning due to the coronavirus also on this slide is a snippet of an article they wrote about me being there other recruitment efforts have included forging relationships with diverse teacher preparation programs and recruitment partners around the country and most importantly creating inclusive school communities where teachers of color thrive and not merely survive so what i've come to learn in this role is that it's it's it's not enough to attract more teachers of color specifically black teachers who are a district we need more leaders of color and positions we need more stability in our teacher rank and people need to feel inspired to come to madison it's a big deal for us to have dr

046jenkins here and i'm excited to partner with dr jenkins and senior leaders to get on the roll to some of these hbcus and minority serving institutions to show the trajectory and possibilities that exist in mmsd next slide barb as i speak to potential candidates and teachers across the country many are inspired by the work we are doing and want to be a part of it they love that we have called out goal 3 black excellence and anti-racism this slide shows our data with teacher hires and retention you can see in 1920 15 of our teachers are teachers of color in that same year 27 of our new hires were teachers of color that's a dark blue line at the top and 9 of those 27 of teachers of color were black teachers but we also

047see in the same year 13 of staff of color resign which is a light blue line our data consistently shows us that it does us no good to have a revolving door in our diversity hiring efforts we must create inclusive communities where staff and teachers feel like they belong are engaged and valued next slide barb this is why we have been super intentional around the onboarding experience of our teachers especially our black teachers we created a series of virtual coffee talks this year for staff to start building connections and relationships across the district prior to the beginning of the school year we're also engaging in empathy interviews with our black teachers to collectively understand their experiences we plan to partner with ford madison and weck wisconsin evaluation collaborative to create a comprehensive overview of teachers

048of color experiences in our district this assessment will help us fully understand the experiences of our teachers of color so our organization can collectively and holistically disrupt and dismantle conditions that perpetuate inequities we know the impact of isolation so we are working to design cohorts of teachers of color so they're not subject to working in isolation as a sole teacher of color in their building our partnership with forward madison provides an opportunity for emergency certified special education teachers to pursue a master's in special education and certification at a highly discounted rate through a cohort model there are current conversations happening now to expand our grow your own opportunities for support staff to pursue a bachelor's degree in partnership with matc and uw we are pursuing all of these diverse efforts to again not only recruit

049and build pipelines of talented teachers but create inclusive communities where they feel supported and ultimately thrive thank you naja and michelle i am michelle fisher and i am honored to serve as our director of professional learning thank you everyone for hearing from us tonight i have had an opportunity to collaborate with naja and michelle as well as mti as you heard from carrie earlier to ensure we not only recruit but also retain black staff because we provide a home a community and a sense of belonging barbara if you can go back one slide that would be great thank you we know the work of anti-racism is about people and systems in order to address systemic issues that hinder black excellence in our district and to create the conditions for black excellence to take hold we

050must begin with our new staff as naja said we lose more black teachers than any other racial group both new and experienced we also see more black staff in emergency certified roles such as special education it's vital that we have an intentional system of support for our black teachers and we know that by intentionally supporting our black staff members we are creating systems that support all of our staff we also know how vital it is for our students to have teachers who look like them and we've seen that research on the impact on all students of having even one black teacher in their educational career last summer naja and i worked together to create a new way of building community among our newly hired staff knowing that teaching in the midst of a health pandemic

051and racial violence was going to bring new challenges we hadn't ever navigated we brought together our new hires in the coffee talks naja mentioned with topics like anti-racist teaching and created spaces for folks new to madison and spaces for black black staff among others here you see quotes from two of our new black teachers speaking to the community they felt upon entering mmsd this year community is one aspect of the work one piece that creates conditions for black excellence in our staff to shine while that belonging is vital there's more to it next slide please barb thank you through the work of induction and mentoring as well as wider professional learning we work to strengthen the mindsets beliefs and anti-racist practices that are required in order to change the experiences our students are having in

052the classroom specifically we received a dpi grant that we are using to intentionally honor the leadership of teachers of color in our schools and train them as mentors through intentional recruitment and principal nomination eight out of ten of our new mentors are teachers of color they will mentor beginning teachers at their respective schools and we are focused on centering blackness and black excellence while intentionally de-centering whiteness in our learning and mentoring spaces additionally we're working specifically with our white mentors to ensure they have the training needed to support teachers of color mentoring is one of the key supports our new teachers name as they tell us why they stay in mmsd and our black staff especially appreciated mentors who not only shared their work experiences but also life experiences as we continue to refine professional

053learning across mmsd nichelle and i are working closely to ensure there isn't separation between professional learning and equity we know that anti-racism is not a work or a single action but a way of being and lifting up black excellence at every step of the way is an essential component through these efforts we hope to see increased retention of teachers of color and increased sense of belonging in our black staff and staff of color and a deeper belief in black excellence among all staff in mmsd that is evident not only in our words but also in our actions thank you thanks michelle barm next slide so to build on what lachelle was saying about our professional learning this year we built from last year's all-district wide rally where we brought in dr bettina love and we

054then asked schools to go back in the afternoon and complete a required professional learning experience specifically on the history of racism um with a focus on housing and and how racism has shown up in housing this year we wanted to continue to build and we have formed a cross-departmental group called our racial equity package i'm sorry oh michelle sorry okay should i um start anything over no good all right so this year working with a cross-departmental group called our racial equity design team we developed a self-assessment to be completed at the school level by their school-based leadership team at the beginning of the year this assessment helps schools select an entry point for their professional learning this year and depending on the answers to their self-assessment they selected one of three phases which you can

055see on this screen they either identified their school community really still being in the discover phase around race and equity or the disrupt phase or dismantle and we also conveyed to schools that none of these phases were static or permanent that they became a differentiated place to begin and to deepen these phases then became the place where school staff would deepen their professional learning this year and in order to do that we also built out a website called the mmsd anti-racism resources website developed with all kinds of resources from videos to articles um in under each of the phases we then also developed three different um professional learning modules that would help schools depending on the phase they were in deep in the work as they started this year we have also on this website

056come up with um suggested scopes and sequences for the ways that schools can continue the journey on the uh in the work we've provided consultation for school staff and we have continued to survey our schools on how they think their professional learning specifically on race equity and anti-racism is going the one thing that virtual learning has afforded us this year is that we had dedicated professional learning time each month uh to focus on race equity and anti-racism and we know that schools have used approximately two to four hours a month at minimum with the intention of having educators build this capacity um to heighten their own awareness to sit in discomfort and then to change those into practices that will positively impact students next slide barb this slide gives us just a few of the

057phases that schools selected at the beginning of the year um and then also on this website i mean also on this website we have we do have uh website analytics that we are monitoring to see how often the website is being used we did a december survey of schools to see how they were measuring the impact of their race and equity professional learning at the school level and based on some of that feedback we heard some themes and one of the themes was that schools wanted more um concrete examples of anti-racist culturally responsive practices in the classroom what does that look like what are educators doing and so even just last week we pulled together some of our very own mmsd educators on a showcase to really bring clear examples um to the surface as

058we finish out this year we will be reaching out to schools to observe to also collect examples of the professional learning they have developed to spotlight best practices and we will do one more end of the year survey and um i think at this point barb if you go to the next slide um we have a pause built in and so um to board chair reyes i'm not sure if you want us to pause after each of the sections or just keep going are there any questions write down on board okay go ahead you can keep going all right thank you all right and next we are going to move into the section of our presentation that is really focused on some of the instructional parts of black excellence i'm going to hand this over

059to marty mo thank you nichelle thanks board for having us super excited to be here tonight and share the work that we're doing um so i'm marty mill i'm the k-12 social studies teacher leader with the curriculum instruction office as my colleague shared earlier who our teachers are matters the supports and learning we provide those teachers and educators is critical and the work we've been engaging in across the school year in the past several years as my colleagues shared is so important in how our district's approaching both black excellence and anti-racism while this training learning and supports are essential how we approach the learning side inside of the classrooms is also playing a crucial role to address this we begin to start the process of re-envisioning and rewriting our social studies curriculum from k to

06012 in both eli and dli programs dual language immersion programs so what what is chosen first for our curriculum really speaks to what it is that we value both what is included and what is excluded and then how those ideals are portrayed within the curriculum so we're going to begin to intentionally work to dismantle white supremacy culture as it shows up in our curriculum we're going to diversify the voices of the stories of our past and present and future and create an inclusive learning environment in which students of color feel seen respected and therefore safe we're going to intentionally provide our students with the opportunity to to analyze how the systems have and continue to perpetuate racism and in doing so also providing opportunities for students to be active participants in working to dismantle that

061practice those practices and the structures that continue to harm our communities today to do this we're going to center our curriculum in african and african american histories and stories and take care to develop intersectionalities opportunities to engage in learning about other histories and stories as well using a method of windows and mirrors to allow students to learn more about their own identities the identities of others and how they are connected to each other and move away from the eurocentric curriculum that has been traditionally taught in this country next slide please supporting the development and implementation of this curriculum we're going to provide professional learning opportunities for our first for our teaching writing teams that we're developing and putting together focusing on both new content as well as the pedagogical practices that we're going to be

062teaching to support our work we've developed a partnership with the carter center for k-12 black history education and dr lagera king who's at the university of missouri they're going to provide professional learning for us on ways that we can authentically shift the ways in which we develop and implement this new curriculum next slide please we had our first session with dr king on march 8th with the curriculum writing teams it was going to be elementary and secondary teams but initially we started with secondary um due to that return to schools in april so we shifted that and so we'll start meeting with the elementary teams in april um rosa thompson will be also working closely with me on that part of the project and we also have students there and we'll also continue to partner

063with them throughout the curriculum development process over the next three years dr king used that day to really introduce a set of principles called the black historical consciousness principles which you can see on the right side of your screen to help us think about how we consider to approach black history really thinking about teaching through black history and not about black history next slide please this process will be inclusive by including various stakeholders into the process we're going to engage families community members local experts and historians and most importantly our students through a student advisory committee that we're actively forming right now some of those students were able to attend that day-long pd with us we're going to meet with the stakeholders to discuss the curriculum what's missing what's been missing what do we need

064to see included receive feedback as well as your ideas on what students are experiencing in the classroom both what is taught how it's taught and what is excluded and so the question is of course when's this going to happen so starting as you can see on this timeline on the screen starting next fall in 2021 our eighth grade social studies teachers will be implementing a new social studies curriculum the modern u.s african-american history course which is currently at west high school only will be implemented in all six high schools across the district and we're going to have a new advanced placement u.s history textbook where teachers will also be once selected we'll be developing a supplemental reader to ensure that we have representation across across all of the peoples who make up this country within

065it in the fall of 22 we will be implementing new learning in kindergarten first grade third grade sixth grade and ninth grade which is us history those teams are also being pulled together this spring to begin the writing process and and those those teams also receiving some professional learning and then in the fall of 23 which will begin developing next spring we'll implement in second fourth fifth and seventh grade as we design and implement we're going to make sure to take care to ensure there's vertical alignment both in the content and the skills used to access that content and of course putting a deep focus on developing civic engagement skills and practices including a focus on local governments beginning with our youngest students and just really quickly to wrap it up all of this idea

066of shifting the what we're teaching is is also coming at the same time that we'll be implementing new social studies standards which are really inquiry focused um focused on getting students to ask questions to to really analyze and research communicate and then ultimately tie everything back to civic engagement thank you and i think sharon dr alexander will be going next i want to say thank you first on the civics cart because that is my question we're doing we're finally starting to teach civics and the other grades what worries me is unless you take ap government or certain courses we don't teach civics as much in middle and in certain high schools and is there a way we can design a civics class so we have people who are aware not just how government works but

067have a legal system as well as well works because these are major life concepts that it's not just i'm an attorney but the number of times i run into people who don't know how the system works including its racial biases which need to be addressed we don't teach it people unfortunately are going to learn but they're going to learn by serving type i don't want anybody to learn it that way so i'm wondering if we could put that in as part of the civics to learn about how how these things work how the public defender system works how voting works how the importance of not just government but local action works how the black lives matter movement changed history which is where we did how the ada actually became involved in even the intersectionality between

068the ada and black panthers without the black panthers being involved in the 504 sentence that wouldn't have been an ada and i just hope we find materials that cover the true intersectionality of the subject yeah absolutely i think all of that what you talked about is something that absolutely has to be covered um both within integrated within courses um and potentially developing courses outside of outside of it that stand alone um whether that's at middle school and or in high school levels as well so yeah i appreciate that idea and that thinking so thank you okay um any other questions i'll leave yeah so i have a few questions for different members of the team i want to start by thanking all of you for presenting um but first my first question is for naj

069you mentioned uh our partner with our partnership with forward medicine in terms of kind of growing your own and doing so through those who have emergency license being able to access a master's in education um i've often questioned you know our approach to pathways and why pathways does not include an education track um that allows for our students to explore their interest in becoming educators what are we doing to you know make sure that grow your own includes the young people we are educating from kindergarten through senior year yeah so i can speak to a little bit of that um and thanks for that ali um i super agree wholeheartedly with all of that um first and foremost i would just say what we have as a grow your own program that um builds pathways

070in a pipeline from high school is our team scholars with ford madison um and their second or third cohort um but to that point it's it's kind of late in the game right we're talking um you know high school right um upperclassmen in high school so what are we doing in pathways that's that's something i would love to entertain um and something i would love to do get me in front of get me in front of kids to talk about the power of education um please um but yes thinking about those pipelines and pathways is something we need to think about critically and um potentially pathways being a part of that is something we should consider thank you for highlighting the team scholars cohorts i appreciate that um i want to ask my second question

071to marty mo and our director of advanced learning uh so marty you spoke very soon can you just speak up a little louder yes i can try for sure is that better you guys hear ollie i can hear her thank you marty all right my second question is for you and for our director of advanced learners um oftentimes when we talk about inclusive curriculum there is an emphasis on black history um which is a singular subject area right and so then black students don't see themselves reflected in their english classes they don't necessarily see themselves reflected in their arts classes and a series of other opportunities the other thing that i want to emphasize in this question is the five areas of advanced learning and including recognizing students in the areas of leadership and in

072the areas of performing arts and what it looks like to expand what we're offering in terms of advanced learner opportunities and identify diverse students in all of those areas with a wide range of abilities including things like dance and theater if it's okay i could go on to my slide because i think i will be speaking directly to your question um it is the next slide and perhaps may answer exactly what you're asking for so i i realized that uh when people think about learning first and foremost my name is dr sharon alexander i am the director of advanced learning and i have been in the position since i june this year i'm very excited to also be here this evening to represent the curriculum instruction department and our executive director kaylee jackson can everyone

073hear me okay okay let me work on my volume i just got off the interstate so let me try this again okay can you hear me now yes i am so sorry i'm uh using my phone i just got out of the car traveling from the chicago land area and it happened to get right to this section right when i got off the interstate so forgive me my name is dr sharon alexander i am the director of advanced learning and representing the curriculum and instruction department as we have been talking about advanced learning and looking at advanced learning differently than solely looking at those students at the very very top of our higher hierarchy what we've been looking on this year is specifically looking at talent development and this year we're going to be working

074in consultation with dr donna ford uh she is a multicultural educator from the ohio state university she is one of the national um most recognized individuals for working with talent development and focusing our attention on what are the needs of students with potential in our district and specifically for students that truthfully maybe if they're just given a chance or access and access to rigor that would be their opportunity for them to thrive so we've been uh slowly but surely working with dr ford coming to our elac meetings getting her involved with working with our students and our our teachers and our advanced learning specialists we're really uh building that understanding of what talent development is what that will look like in mmsd and then using that information to start identifying again those different learners for

075our five gifted areas so that we could really again um offer the rigor but also the leadership of those intense relationships to some of the other areas of giftedness one of the other areas that's been extremely important for us this year is really getting on board with our earned honors programs and ensuring that not only is wound honors offered through our pathways but also offered as a pathway for other individual students to perhaps take on additional coursework at the high school so we want to have a trajectory that students have every opportunity to feel successful in the classroom be exposed to rigor and be able to be do well on a performance assessment and earn honors in their classroom with those opportunities it'll allow our students to then be better prepared for our advanced placement

076courses we want students to really think about some of our other additional college and career readiness opportunities within the district and that is our focus as we start looking at what different ways can we start allowing more students access to to rigor it's not just those high high performing students but all students and what are we doing to ensure that those students have those opportunities and then are supported as they go through that process so that would be our drive for this year we're excited to have this partnership and then be able to answer again those questions that we just mentioned about really finding what that talent is in our district and then fortifying and making sure that that's what we focus on for the years to come thank you so much for speaking to

077that um section questions michelle did you have an exception section yep we still have a we have quite a bit more on this presentation um and then we'll ask any further questions at the end okay sounds good thank you um sharon appreciate you all right next we're gonna um take a focus on special education joanne grassman and nancy mulfinter are here to talk about some work they're doing thank you michelle um thank you to the board members for having us i'm joanne grassman i'm one of the assistant directors in our student services department and i and my colleague nancy mulfenter will give you um introduction to what we are doing um around anti-racist ieps and this project started with some wonderings from our program support teachers um they reported that when they read ieps for

078our black students with disabilities they were left with that feeling that the content was biased toward negativity and for our students with disabilities we want our ieps to bring hope we want them to bring optimism they shouldn't be vehicles that perpetuate negative perceptions or contribute to feelings of alienation so we started with some analysis of iep content at the high school level looking for answers to two questions the first was are our ieps actually written differently for black students than for white students and if so do those differences create a negative impact for our black students what you see in this first slide here is a few of the differences that we've discovered so far and unfortunately the answer to that first question was yes they they are written differently and we do believe that

079they contribute also to um disparate income or disparate outcomes for our black students so the analysis we're continuing the analysis so that we can better understand differences we want to look at different ages different types of disabilities but it's apparent already to us that there are differences and that those are um differences that negatively impact our students so we're moving forward with that action steps i'll remember the next slide please the work that we're doing is to purposefully identify and to disrupt the iep content and the process of developing ieps that perpetuates negative and low expectations for our black students and replace them with content and actions that uplift our black students next slide please so obviously the process of developing an iep is directly tied to the content of the iep um and we're

080thinking about the about these two areas as two streams of work focusing on content and on the process of developing ieps so in terms of the content what we will be expecting is iep language that uplifts black excellence language that speaks to students strengths to what they want for their future their aspirations and that carefully identifies academic and disability related needs as skills that are to be taught by educators in the next slide please to do this we really need to look at multiple processes that need to change starting with how we come to understand the true underlying influences and causes of behavior which is the area that most often is written we would perceive as written negatively in our ieps and when we when we do that when we really come to understand the

081true underlying causes of behavior these may be related to lagging skills but not necessarily and we we are discovering that we also need to look for influences that might not be disability we need to understand our black students experience in school and the other systemic challenges that impact our black students we need to ensure that their voice is at the center of the iep development process and i'm going to turn it over to nancy who will talk a bit more about our next steps and how we're doing this work thank you joanne good evening everyone i am nancy mulfinter as joanne said i am another assistant director in the student services department could i get the next slide please thank you very much so what are we doing what are our next steps well a

082district-wide work group has begun to develop parameters to describe what an anti-racist iep or individual education program looks like in order to help teachers understand what to do to create positive change so we want to focus on what needs to be done in addition a process to review ieps to ensure that they are written using anti-racist language and tools will be developed and implemented so based on these two goals the work group has identified multiple stakeholders that need additional knowledge and skills in order to achieve our collective goals the stakeholders will include special education teachers people who serve as local education authority representatives at iep team meetings and are often the decision makers at iep team meetings along with all of the other team members and related service providers assistant directors pfts building principals and

083administrators and then most importantly of all our students and our parents at all building and grade levels as the most critical team members on the iep so we have begun to work with scholar dr ashley white who is new to uw madison as and has extensive experience and research in this area dr white will be assisting with decisions about next steps in data analysis and professional development for teachers which will begin on april 12th thank you very much which is you stated the lea is the decision maker i thought the entire team everyone had that people had to be in agreement as a team it wasn't just one decision maker it was multiple decision makers or among this incorrect of that so thank you nikki for asking that question um i i absolutely misstated that

084and worked to correct it in the rest of my presentation statements so you are absolutely right that was just nervousness coming out in the presentation so thank you for asking that question nikki that was the only question okay let's move forward all right thank you i want to just acknowledge i know our presentation is very thorough and is taking a little longer so we're gonna finish up with just our uh quick overview of our last section which highlights our collaboration and partnership with families community organizations and then i'll kind of close out with um black girl magic so angela if you can um provide our next overview and then we we will be um done very shortly sure thing michelle i'll try to be efficient so hi everyone i'm angela fitzgerald ward director of the

085family youth and community engagement or feist department happy to share with you about the funding support we provided to our multicultural parent affinity groups but to give you some context feis previously funded ideas from schools to strengthen their relationships with families this year in response to the disproportionate impact of multiple pandemics and virtual learning we have intentionally shifted the use of these funds to support parent-led ideas from our historically marginalized families who identify as black indigenous or people of color or bypoc so schools were invited to to submit many proposals in january to use funds to either contract with community orgs llcs or facilitators external to mmst to support our bipoc parent affinity groups or to work directly in partnership with bipac parent groups to implement parent-led ideas and activities which is so important to

086us we wanted to um center the needs of our bipock families as well as include them in decision making on how funds are used so fifty nine thousand nine hundred eighty total was dispersed to 13 schools who submitted proposals two of those schools are kennedy elementary and cherokee heights middle school kennedy's a multilingual families decide to use the funds to host game nights for families to connect and build community while the charity cherokee heights face team um decided to use the funds to contract with infamous mother ceo and founder dr sagacious livingston to support their black family affinity groups um so we plan to evaluate the use of these funds at the mid-semester to further understand impact and to inform future strategies around strong homeschool community partnerships because we see this investment as vital um

087to student success and the transformation of culture and climate within mmsd so handing it back over to the show thank you angela you did a great job um next slide please barb and then we also just wanted you all to know that we are continuing to meet with parents um who are raising black children in our district we've had monthly meetings since october with our black excellence coalition three of those meetings that you can see on the screen brought in either district staff or guest speakers um and also to note our original think tank that helped us um a couple of years ago is being used a little differently this year five of our think tank members were part of our review committee for our um rfp process for black excellence others are working um

088side by side with other district leaders and i'll be calling on them again as soon as we get our community organizations up and running with the black excellence proposals so that they can help bring voice to how we plan to measure the impact of those programs next slide and this slide is just a reminder of the organizations that we selected from the rfp process we're eager to see programming get up and running and now i'm going to quickly hand it over to rosa thompson to close us out with a shining example of how we are supporting students and affirming who they are rosa thank you nichelle hello everyone my name is rosa thompson and i am an advanced learning teacher at shank um elementary school and i'm the founder of the black girl magic conference

089um this year due to the coven pandemic and what we found was the need to engage our black girls and events throughout the year i made a decision to host at least one event each quarter in addition to our end of the year black girl magic conference so for the first time this year we also provided programming for our k2 schools and we did a high school event for black and multi-racial girls the first event that we held this year was the black girl magic virtual sister circles in october of 2020 this was a four-part event led by black women from the madison community who were trained as circle leaders or in restorative justice educators social workers therapists um and we created this healing space um as we felt like there's been so much trauma

090nationwide from march until october as well as right here in our community and we were worried about our younger girls being forgotten and not being given space to heal and process these events um so then next we partnered with the um uw black graduate and professional student association to host i'm sorry to host the halloween science fair for our k2 students at midvale lapham and franklin the um the black girl magic conference provided supplies science supplies for the girls and they had the opportunity to perform multiple science projects led by uw grad students in january we hosted the black girl magic college kickback for junior and senior black and multi-racial young women um given the fact that our bsus were unable to go on their annual hbcu college tours last year and we'll be unable

091to go this year [Music] we wanted to create a space for the young women to ask questions about topics like being a black woman on campus college tips resources and hear from black other black women who had been in their shoes so the afternoon included a dj we heard from gail ford who is the executive director of the people program there was a panel with college students from pwis and hbcus breakout sessions in college trivia today we resume the black girl magic sister circles for our fourth through seventh grade girls we were really honored to be able to host miss universe zosie tunze who shared her story and words of wisdom as by being the first um south african miss universe and the miss um first miss universe with natural hair so our focus for

092the spring sister circles is protest art and the role that art plays in activism and we also hosted black women who created art for the state street murals and are featured in the american family let's talk about it books which all of our girls received and they shared their inspiration behind their artwork our last event for the 2020 school year will be our fourth annual black girl magic conference will be held virtually on friday may 28th for all fourth through eighth grade girls who identify as black and multi-racial um our theme will be youth activism and advocacy and we are looking forward to a phenomenal virtual day of guest speakers breakout sessions community building and lots of virtual fun thank you very much for your time thank you rosa um so for the board members

093and dr jenkins that concludes our update um thank you again for um allowing us to have time on your agenda for this black excellence update and it's our hope that you can see um some of the work that is happening across the district to really create conditions that will actually uplift and support black excellence at this time if you have any questions or comments for any any of the presenters um we can take those if you would um not have any questions or comments we understand and again thank you for the time thank you michelle and uh entire staff for coming tonight um this was very informative i'm really happy to see all the great work um that you are leading on michelle and all the great work that's happening um around black excellence um

094and i really do like that um we're i see a difference here and that we're moving we're really touching on curriculum and instruction right i mean i think when we first started it was very much um you know the parent groups and then the working with organizations which was really set the foundation but i think moving in now into ieps even i mean i mean this is excellent work and i'm just wondering i think how we connected to the evaluation um and how how much i mean when when are we going to ever evaluate how do we know what we're doing is working um and so you know i really like the um the teacher recruitment and that diagram i think that's really helpful for us um but being able to not only evaluate the

095impact but deviate when needed and do it quickly right be really innovative innovative and uh and just change trajectory if we need to right and so i'm just wondering what your thoughts are around that yes i appreciate that question gloria i think that you know one of the things that we do need to work on moving forward is having um kind of some kind of a a dashboard that we can pull out the metrics that we are using to really um identify success of each of these efforts so that is something that i'm looking forward to us working on in the near future i think one of the other reasons why we wanted to present the information that was presented tonight is to to kind of lift pull the curtain back a little bit and

096and to get a better idea of what's happening inside departments that sometimes is hard to uplift and understand and so i also think we need to have more of a plan um that is easy to find easy to read and that we would have a way of coming back to that equity plan as a way of being able to identify our movement on those uh key metrics and to your point to also um shift or pivot when needed so uh the question is a great one and and that is some of the future work that we will be taking on yeah i love the idea of the dashboard that you just talked about right where somebody could just log in and um and use it as we move through this work um yeah i also

097can see now what dr jacobs has been talking about when he he says like you know when we initiated and launched black excellence we were like well what is it how do we feel it like where does it go is it separate how do we use it it's like now i sort of see that transition into infusing it and everything that we do within our school so um excellent job everyone um for your work on this um and i see the progress i see now the vision moving forward and um so yeah thank you for everything any questions yeah so thanks for this presentation i also want to echo that comment that i see this as a much more comprehensive approach and i i like to see all the different pieces and factors and we'll

098look forward to continued updates on this um i guess my question is more specific around the curriculum that we were talking about if we go way back and i don't know if this is a question for marty or somebody else but can you clarify if we are developing our own curriculum or if we are taking curriculum that has been used and been successful in other places adapting it to what we need or what is our approach here um the reason i ask is because i've done curriculum development before and it takes a lot of time to do that to create your own and i know we like to do that in medicine but there could be a lot of useful resources out there that we could be um actually adopting and utilizing um that would

099meet our needs so i guess i i'm curious about this strategy yeah um i'll i'll address that name i can jump in um who works with me if they feel like it but we're creating our own but we are looking at the same time so if there's things out there that meet our needs and are doing what we're trying to do with this work then then we'll be happy to kind of look into taking and adapting or taking and modifying it so it specifically meets our need needs sorry um so but right now yeah we're we're beginning the process of actually digging in and and really going into developing our own curriculum which is why for most of it it's like a year and a half out realizing that we need that time to be

100really thoughtful the eighth grade work is going to be coming up fast so we're going to have to make sure that we're adaptable and and ready to i think to the point that was just brought up a few minutes ago seeing if it's working not working if it's not working or we're going to have to be able to adjust quickly and think about how do we fix it and make it better so at the same time there's other school districts that are doing this work louisville kentucky jefferson county i'm meeting with them once a month they've been doing this work for three years now and they've developed curriculum around inquiry as well as using dr king's principles so engaging with other school districts engaging with competent experts as well as some university people so yeah

101thank you i'd love to see some of the work that other scholars have done already based on this work so that that would be great to see along the way here too um kaylee you look like you're going to jump in yes thank you and thank you marty um so yes to everything he said and i also think that we just have to be sure that we understand there's a difference between curriculum and resources right so um we are certainly um when he when he speaks to creating curriculum where we're speaking to uh making the standards come to life in our classrooms um using high quality resources right and so a lot of the work that marty is doing right now with um teacher teams uh that are currently in the schools is looking at

102those uh high quality resources that center um the the true history of um of our of our black people um and and lifting those experiences to life right so i don't want the the the narrative to be we're creating everything from scratch because that isn't the case um we are using high quality resources in order to make the standards uh come to life across our classrooms okay thank you any other questions yeah my my question and i think we're going to talk about this in april about um advanced learning and earned honors and how that all fits together but i guess i would just like to encourage us when we do get to that topic that we've over the years we've really gotten caught up with advanced learning and identification and the part about the

103making sure that we're providing the opportunities and the programming for students that is matched to the identified need so if ali is talking about identifying in the arts what programming and opportunities do we have in arts to match that learning need that students have and so if we can make sure that we're doing that as we're talking about um how to do the advanced learning piece that would be great great any other questions first no that's it okay thanks all right anybody else great let's move on um yeah i'm sorry i know one more one but i just have to live uh thank you so much to michelle and the entire team the way that you represent it this is what we were talking about in the beginning what does it look like feel like

104as you said gloria this really has given us some insight but we're going to come back to actual measurements as michelle said and we're talking to research and evaluation so we can get to that dashboard that you mentioned and we had uh rosa thompson on here black girls magic we cannot get out of here without lifting her up i mean that is like has gone viral so i just want to say thank you to her uh and the entire team how you brought all of this together i'm looking forward to the work you're going to do to really seriously take life excellence to the next level and we know this we take black excellence to the next level everything rises okay so i just want to say great note to end on right so okay

105let's move on to report on items um i proceeded through the instruction work group um laura can i go next please i can report on that please yes all right okay is saying i'm reporting on that i'll be blind yeah so last uh operation or i'm sorry instruction work group on march 1 we talked about reopening instruction summer school and also had a good conversation on our opportunity youth programming looks like no action items float through that work group however our next instruction work group will be april 5 or we will be talking about or we will have another update concerning reopening schools virtual programming for next school year and regard to honors wait thank you for that man next is report on items um that proceeded through the operations of our first question thank

106you gloria um operation torquay met on march 8th we um had a lengthy discussion about the budget um and we have a few action items that came out of that conversation specifically some early approval votes on health care um summer semester and strategy of equity charges we also talked about the employee handbook specifically layoff and surplus language in the handbook and we also have about our action item related to that tonight as well um our next meeting is april 12th we will again be working on the budget um we'll be talking about community input on our referendum plans and then we have a couple of policies that we'll be looking at as well right may i make a motion to uh please move the employee handbook up before the early approvals because it honestly may

107affect how i vote on them and so the handbook language revisions will impact financially yes okay she's making a mickey's making motion is there a second no second motion sales okay um next um no action um no for the instruction no action items that proceeded through the operations approved early budget proposal health care i knew that the board of education includes decreasing the current 20 20 21 health care budget by a an estimated 1.6 million and maintaining ghc and dean as mmsc providers while retaining the primary health care clinic second mickey mickey second your discussion number four i hate motion passes hi oh i'm sorry next um item 92 early budget proposal 2021 summer semester i mean that the board of education improved the 2021 mmsc summer semester model and 2021 budget in the amount

108of 6 million 276 803 with up to 2 million in one time federal coven 19 funding 435 000 in title uh funding and up to 3841 803 from the 2021 22 summer school operating budget ali second any discussions okay julia your advisory vote hi hi ali hi hi chris hi steven hi chris hi henanda hi hi gloria hi motion um and next is the early budget proposal excellence and equity projects um i knew that the board of education grant early approval of the following 2021-22 budget requests to facilitate timely ordering of long lead-time materials equipment or to accelerate necessary planning for summer until for which a an increase of one million three hundred thousand to the 2021 22 elementary staffing budget and early childhood program staffing and non-personnel budget to launch the district's first ever

109full-time 4k programming program using local resources being an increase of 216 000 to the 2021 22 mental health budget to support expansion of the bounce back program and sustainability of the behavior of health in schools programs see an increase of 436 000 to the high school staffing budget to support a new restorative justice coordinator position in each comprehensive high school using local resources and e an increase of 609 000 to the middle school staffing budget to support 6.0 more fte consulate counselors across middle schools to lower the overall student to counselor support ratios using local resources second the second person okay i really feel strongly about making sure we have the funds to take care of our teachers and take care of our staff before i have developments okay um yeah so i just want

110to publish the work of dr jenkins in bringing full day 48 to our district for the first time i'm very excited to support these initiatives and i'm very excited for the work we've done to make summer semester um you know an expansive academic experience for our young people this year so thank you for this work thank you yeah particularly during this time stadium yeah i just want to explore the excitement around all day 4k and we're leading up to that i think that is a huge moment for the community is one of the most important things we can do as a board to uh support uh closing the opportunity gap in our community uh and two i really wanna uplift the work of our sort of justice committee and that work that's done to really

111transform a sort of justice and secondary but also throughout our entire education system so um it's been great to work with you gloria on that committee and this is an exciting moment thank you any other comments hey julia your pleasure hi hi hey holly hi nay nay hi chris first i sabian yes first bomber schmidt hi hi warrior i throw six eyes and one thank you motion passes okay next item employ handbook language provisions i knew that the board of education adapt to the adopted modifications to the mmsc employee handbook is set forward in the documentary care for this agenda effective july 2021 um okay um can i get a second yes um i'd like to make an amendment and then i have two comments and one question as i mentioned great um nikki before

112you begin i just want to um just a few discussion points i'd like to throw out there before we start discussion sorry about that um i just want to make sure that we understand that this motion represents the language our our community was notified um that would be brought forward uh to the release of public documents on february 1922. okay discussion point number two as the motion scans the rubric um which will be the tool used to support the changed handful of language will not be part of the employee handle um district leadership i just want to uh at our last meeting uh we asked the question about how many times um district leadership has met with mti we've met extensively throughout the school year with mti readership there have been 70 meetings between district

113leadership and mti readership since september 3rd 2020 each meeting lasted for approximately one hour there have been 23 friday mornings where the superintendent met for one hour with mti leaders since september 11 2020 and there were 20 handbook meetings from october to march 2021 each meeting lasted for approximately 90 minutes i just wanted to make sure first that we got that question answered uh for the board that was actually on number two is it are we allowed to make that amendment on the handbook because otherwise we're voting on address we can't vote on a draft what is your question if it lives outside the handbook the rubric and everything related to it would be voting on a draft because the percentages could be changed so so that wouldn't then we are legally voting on a

114draft which we can't legally do so can we um get legal on the line sounds like he has a legal question did you hear that sure yes i did um so nikki are you saying that as proposed the language in the proposal document the red line document that says handbook proposal that is the language that we're talking about i don't understand your question about the rubric being in draft if you're not voting on the rubric has a motion been made to amend it to vote that's what i was planning to make i was asking if it was legal to make one you can make the amendment and then i can explain why i think that uh that is probably not the best thing to do in this instance um but the board has to second

115that amendment otherwise it is not up for discussion at this point okay so make your motion all right my two motions just let's start with the first one okay the first one is i move sorry i gotta ring my own hand ready so i need the glasses a bit more i move under 6.2 a if i move in a in a in addendum a section 6.2 i move to remove the revised language i notice a layout regarding 30 days and regard regarding the 30 days and regarding any firing in october november which was removed but i just would like it to be efficient okay let's let's start with the rubric okay you you said put your first question that was my first question the second one is my rubric one okay share where you've gone

116absolutely can someone explain the this motion for me i i'm i'm a bit confused very simple we removed for the agreement the provision that we would fire teachers as late we could lay off teachers as late as october and november however we retained in the language the 30-day the only the notice was only 30 days which food captured extension 120 one according to my uh notes that cut that could contradict 118.22 and affect our notice of um hiring and possibly cause contractual issues so i was hoping to make it simpler by just taking it out completely and therefore we could have spring layoffs and surplus without the 30 days we do that we'd have to follow the actual contract period which is the uh one year thank you nikki did you um we have a

117second so we can discuss this motion um did you you typed in do you want to add to it yeah i just want to make a clarification so the the point of the language for the 30 days is just to be more explicit about the actual non-renewal language that is per statute right so right now when you're looking at non-renewal and when we provide final notice it is about 30 days that staff are getting final notice to the end of of their contracted time so all this language is saying is it is spelling it out specifically because i think there was confusion with the board early on that a 30-day notice was something that just came out of out of the air somewhere it is really specifically tied to the non-renewal language when you're looking

118at the final prelim the final notice that somebody would get through a non-renewal process so all it is doing is providing clarity for the board i just find it superfluous because we already have a statute that says how to handle exactly a surplus and layoff in the statute the concrete goes from this state to this day this would change surplus language we don't wouldn't need the 30 days if they already have statutory it's not about surplus language nikki this is layoff specifically this is not this is layoff language that you're talking about and all it is doing is providing specificity and clarity that is all that it is doing it says right there specifically in the language that we will follow the non-renewal process so or that's all it's doing it's just providing clear language

119i just don't feel it's necessary hence why i meant most okay thank you chris thank you duder for that um i do want to clarify this further though because we talked about this in july it was clarified to the board that layoff and non-renewal are not the same thing and we have changed the language here to lead off with layoff instead of leading up with the state statutes around non-renewals i just want to make sure we're not actually changing anything in practice um this is that you could put i'm a little concerned that you could give the notice you know in may as the as the rule says but then would you be able to then give 30-day notice of layoff following that at any point as opposed to using the calendar that is set

120forth in 118.22 which is pretty strict but also there's legal precedent for handbooks or collective marketing agreements overriding that calendar so i also don't understand why we need to change this like why don't we just stick with the languages there right now so in in drafting this language and speaking specifically with general counsel it was agreed that this was providing the clarity for the board it states in there very specifically that we will follow the non-renewal process based on the statute so you know sherry i don't know if you want to jump in on this i i'm missing what what the the concern is here when we've been explicit in saying that we would follow the non-renewal process based on the statute i could marry chris um just uh does that clarify things for you

121no it's still just like a you know would it be possible to lay off staff with 30-day notice following the may 15th deadline for non-renewal in state statute with this new language would that be possible did that happen that is not my interpretation i will yield to the general counsel thanks you asked that question again so 118.22 it has a very clear calendar it's actually it's 30 days plus i think there's a 15-day written notice it has to be given a credibility um staff who are given the notice of non-renewal can ask for a meeting with the board if they have a five-day window it's all pretty clearly spelled out and the current language in the handbook basically adheres to what's in 118.22 and i'm a little concerned that the changes that are in the

122new language push us away from that possibly and i just want to make sure first of all that all of the the procedures that are laid out in point two two stay the way this is written right now i think you know this doesn't talk about the written notice and secondly the interpretation of the new language would it be possible to give that notice that the district intends to have layoffs by the deadline that is specified in the new policy but then give notice of layoffs later as opposed to using the calendar 118.22 would you be able to give a staff member and lay off notice after may 15th using this new language is there any chance that could happen no chris what we're saying is as deirdre uh indicated we're trying to be explicitly

123clear that we will continue to follow that language early on in the conversations there was confusion about when it would happen and part of that confusion was about um the language that we've since withdrawn which is the layoffs in september and october because those had that happened we were setting out a time frame upon which staff would be notified leaving the 30 days in just solidifies the language that is already there it solidifies what we already do with regard to layoffs so i think i think this change is unnecessary like the old the current-handed language says that anyway i don't think we need to change things like i think it's fine the way it is and this seems like an unnecessary change so i agree with nikki i don't think i think we could just

124you know amend to take out the new language here because we took out the october decision point and the current language as it stands serves the purpose we want so and it is right motion so you're saying that the current language already does it yeah the current language does what we need it to do so we don't need this change so um read your motion yes again yes absolutely not sure in addendum a section 6.2 i move to remove i move to remove the revised language and notice the layout and the 30 day provision as well as the firing in october book that's already been removed so that part doesn't mean and i've got a second for that nikki you reference the notice you want to remove the notice as well i want to any

125changes to the noticed that are currently in this iteration of the draft okay i don't know if that's actually i mean you already put that on yeah i already put that can i just change that up sorry cherry i'm driving you nuts and i apologize i'm trying here it's been one of those weeks does everybody understand no is the amendment to change the to amend the language that's being proposed or to go back to the original language to go back to the origin yeah that's could i try to be stated yes because obviously i stated it badly they just stated badly i just wanted to basically that you're moving to remove the revised language of that notice of layoff yep that's it i just got tripped up by words every now and then when i

126get into legal like kind of forget how to switch into english language okay yeah can i just hear from deirdre if what she is proposing here does clarify something i mean after we took the october note i'm sorry chris can you restate your question yeah after we took the october date out if you can stay on screen along with sherry it would be helpful because you we're going to be interacting here for a moment so thank you just to clarify the the 30 day in the language that you have here just going back to the the original does it mess anything up for that dirty calendar data to put in here no i think the the response was that this is providing clarity for the board uh because there there seems to be confusion on

127what the actual notice is in the statute and the statute at the end of the day provides about 30 days notice uh when we're using the non-renewal process for layoffs so all this is essentially doing is providing that clarity so that everybody knows that it's 30 days notice at least with an emphasis on at least the board always has the discretion to provide more notice if they so chose any further discussion can i ask a question gloria i'm a bit more confused with the resistance from my colleagues to provide clarity on a policy that is already pretty controversial sorry you know as someone that um is really fascinated by policies and interpretations of i always deeply appreciate when questions come up about them which they have in our discussions and when folks attempt to provide

128further clarity and at times sounded potentially repetitive but to really state something that could potentially be overlooked or folks may be a bit confused with the interpretation so i'm a bit a bit confused about the fact that we are spending quite a bit of time on something that finds to be helpful uh to to our staff and to us quite frankly actually i've heard quite a bit from staff on that issue okay i'm speaking on my motion is that okay yeah i'm i'm i'm confused about i i understand the motion of nikki i'm confused about the fact that why are we spending this much time on providing further clear clarity on the thing that we are already stating because i've heard from quite a few staff who say it actually money the issue and legally

129i know that the 30-day issue has been settled by statute i think that the statute is clear to have the digital language actually would be more confusing not less okay thank you any further discussion um i would just um add to that that i think the confusion came from the multiple changes that have happened to this piece and we're you know because we aren't actually changing it now i think it just makes sense to go back to what it was okay thank you chris um savion hey sherry thank you so much for joining us um how will this motion affect the final motion so this on this particular issue it's the same as any other um motion that you guys would make with regard to language um because essentially you're saying we don't want to

130make a change to this particular part of the hand even though the 30 days is not a change it's an enhancement but it's enhancement that the board doesn't want it's in there thank you okay are any further discussion absolutely [Music] but isn't enhancement actually changing i mean if we're enhancing something you inherently aren't changing what the original is we changed the word the words are different nikki but the intent is the same it's the same except for we laid out the specific 30 days and this they can't be the same for the summer you just can't okay so we got a motion on the floor um we've had to start we have a second we've had discussion um this is the world global alley on the promotion and the mickey's motion [Music] um yes okay

131all right um may i make my next motion not yet i'm still we're still on this motion okay so uh motion fails from when i didn't go i i'm sorry maybe no made to um my second notion is i believe the rubric and the weights and everything we're going to spend a lot of time discussing weights and seniority and cultural illusions and what's important and these are all essential things but if they don't live in the handbook it means they can be changed and that the board needs to vote on the rubric itself according to um state statutes we have the right and duty to vote on policies correct draft policy make policy approve policy and vote on proposals if we don't vote on it then we're advocating the duty that we were elected to

132do i mean am i going to win every vote no can you make a motion lie within the handbook okay thank you can i get a second first seriously second okay um discussion go ahead and very simply when you have a rubric you have a set of rules set rules you have to be able to appeal by a set of rules that everyone could follow look up and be able to affect when you don't put those rules in the handbook you're putting it at an unfair disadvantage because they could be changed at any time if we have a commitment to anti-racist education which i think we do why would we put the hands in the decision in more principles hands rather than last one on the cultural competency that's my first point but secondly on

133this why wouldn't we want the rubric to be set we're going to create make beautiful change we should have the rules set in the handbook so they stick otherwise we just have guides we don't have an actual policy thank you okay um uh just uh advice from legal counsel on why um if there are any reasons that we should not have the rubric within the handbook any legal assertions sure on the question of whether the rubrics should live within or outside the handbook we need to look to the difference between policy and practice over the years we have not always been clear about what is practiced and what is policy practice is the how behind the policies that the board ratifies by vote in this case the rubric is the series of steps we're using

134to operationalize the handbook language changes and achieve a consistent result or output the overall change we're looking for is improve student outcomes through the retention of our most high quality teachers including recently hired staff of color the handbook language change that you're voting on is one policy that is one link in a chain of policies that will move us towards improved student outcomes the practice is those steps that administration has indicated it is taking to ensure that your policy the handbook language changes are implemented with fidelity the rubric is the tool by which the administration will train and implement organizational performance measurement which may have to be changed from time to time to ensure that we are meeting the goals of increasing retention of our most recently hired staff with the focus on retaining high

135quality staff of color while taking into account seniority plus the other factors that articulated in the rubric to get to our end goal of improved student outcomes in the simplest terms the rubric is the evaluation tool for staff who are being considered for surplus and layoff just as the annual evaluation tools for all staff are not in the handbook the rubric as such a tool should not be in the handbook may i respond did she did she answer your question yes and i have a response that's why i want to know that was allowed my response also of that is yes we have a policy of practice mixed the two most uh recently unfortunately was at the west high school fire of the security guard we said we were fine with it as a practice

136until we owned until we had someone lose his job over something that wasn't policy never was policy was practiced i don't want to go back there i don't want to go back and put anyone through that twice and i don't think that's going to help and put student outcomes additionally if you look at the michigan state study which is what i've been referencing previously if you look at that the majority of people seven percent of they found over seven percent stated that this was a minor issue the majority issue and i'm quoting it probably wrongly and if so please correct me because of bad numbers but what is important is this we need our teachers to be able to teach with to be and reach our students we can't get our students to full potential

137if we don't support the teachers to teach them at the full potential if they're in fear on surplus and layoffs and we're included in severity at only and that that amount can be changed at any time this doesn't give our teachers much secure that worries me additionally what worries me and that now i'm moving into my comment if i met so first we need to deal with the motion that's on the floor right now we are amended motion yes uh to include rubric within the handle correct changes okay so we need to stick with that and then we move on to broader discussions i'm sure that's where you're heading so any further discussion on the motion on the floor julia yeah i just had a question um so if we don't accept nikki's motion amendment

138theoretically could the district uh decrease seniority to a different weight of like any different weight without consulting the board um julia i don't know if you recall but in the meeting there is also at least three other groups that would be would need to look at the rubric and any changes made to the rubric before any changes would be made um the urger can speak a little bit more about which groups those are um but that is one way that we are trying to ensure that uh there are no changes that would just come out of the blue yeah i guess my concern is just that uh mti is this only way of kind of voicing their opinion here and is through the board and so i mean they are part of one of those

139committees that would be reviewing um this on a fairly regular basis but again i defer to um deirdre to respond on that [Music] yeah thanks jerry we talked about an oversight committee that would be comprised of central office mti leadership teachers students to really work through this process and the oversight committee will be charged with you know reviewing the process looking at data that's collected over time and making suggestions and recommendations as we move forward um on how this how this is working so um that that's where i see the work living [Music] uh kind of is there a reason why why any change like that should not go through the board because julia as i indicated that is practice it's it's similar to evaluations of other staff um their annual evaluations at the point

140of when a staff would be considered for layoff or surplus we have to have some way of determining in addition to seniority how we're going to choose that person this would be their evaluation and just as the evaluation of other staff are not voted on by the board this is a tool and it should be treated as the tool and treat it as practice yeah i don't need to respect for anything i just think it's a problem that there's that i mean theoretically administrative stuff and i mean let's be honest i mean in reality like oversight groups end up being dictated by the administration or they don't have that much power i mean that's just how it works and i think it's a problem that you know seniority could decrease to say like one percent

141without the board or mti being formally consulted thank you julia um and so i mean i think you know my i think this is a a good um question i think for me in really my original motion was um you know specifically said i knew that the board of education adopted modifications to the mmsc employee handling setboard in the documents prepared for this agenda item daily marching the documents prepared includes the rule break so that's why i am a little confused um of why we specifically you know i'm confused about the amendment because the original amendment says that we are we are approving tonight the documents prepared for this agenda um chris do you want to speak on the motion yeah can i clarify that the documents i believe that we are approving are the

142layoff red line and the surplus red line is that correct the two documents yes that is that is correct the other document is the memo to the board the board does not vote on the memos to the board they vote on the two documents that chris just referenced okay thank you we have as a board since 2017 since i've been on that have the board involved in making decisions if we allow admin to unilaterally do this i think this is a great mistake yeah this is my motion and this is part of it and it's very simple on why i wrote it i wrote it very simply because the board acts when it votes to neuter the board and do not allow it to speak and to allow it to be individually changed by administration

143shows no consistency to future boards it shows no precedent by not showing that precedent you are creating a system in which you can be abused by boards that aren't as ethical as ours and it will cause problems in the future not with ours but what's the future and that precedent is way too dangerous thank you chris um so i feel like there's a not a firm line between policy and practice if you look at the handbook you have things in there like salary schedules you have things in there like pay schedule or um hours worked like we do have some practice outlined in the handbook and we need to um i i think it makes sense to put this rubric in the handbook because that guarantees that changes to the handbook will go through the

144collaborative handbook process which means we're all coming together and speaking collectively when we make changes to this rubric and i think that there's power in that especially since we know that this rubric isn't perfect and we know that it's going to need to be tweaked and evaluated and i think there's power in committing to doing that through a collaborative process to work towards our goals of being an anti-racist district so i would argue to put it in the handbook for that reason i think it just makes the whole process stronger to do that thank you um any further discussion i i i have i i i'm happy that we got to the point of of the loser i think that um in elevating culturally responsive uh teaching uh to 40 is important and i'm also

145very appreciative that uh the district listened to us when we wanted to elevate some more so this is not uh just to be clear to our community this is not eliminating uh seniority at all um it came to us at ten percent and we um i requested the increase to twenty percent um confusion okay listen okay um we'll talk about delivery and so um so i'm i'm i think that the rubric should be in in the handle um language i'm in agreement with that um and um you know i think that it was a rubric that we all worked um along with the administration uh to come up with and i think it should be included in the language and so um changes so let's go ahead and vote um ali the motion is to

146answer your question gloria before we go to a vote yeah um can someone explain to me why did we remove the rubric out of the um original motion so um it wasn't in the original motion we're asking um we have amendment on the floor to add it to the original motion so i'm trying to understand the the rationale of removing because at first i thought we couldn't vote because it's in a draft format that was what i understood but now you're all asking this motion is to put put in a draft format the rubric back into the motion and i'm trying to understand why did we remove in the first place it was never there the first place i wanted that at it so that way it could be part of the process and therefore

147it wouldn't be a draft because it would be in an actual handbook so you have something to follow it was never another so what why did why did the administration remove the rubric out of why is there an administration not recommending let me ask this differently why is administrators not recommending the rubric to be part of the documents that we're voting as sherry indicated um she indicated the policy uh there's difference between policy and practice i don't know if you want to repeat that so i first i can repeat it i understood that part terry can you tell me like are you thinking that we want to continue to have flexibility to adjust this practice which that i would understand uh is there any other motive there's no motive um except for i mean if

148you think about it at that at the point that we're at right now you know we're saying that the oversight committee would be the one that would review if there were any necessary changes now let's say that there were some legislative change that we have to um make a change to the rubric it would this process would make it significantly more difficult because we all know how long it takes to actually get policy up to the board and so you know if we needed to be nimble and make a shift or if somebody if in the middle we realize oh wait a minute that point right there that that point is not getting us where we need to be because we've reviewed say four other um evaluations or for other lay off candidates who've gone

149through and we won't be able to make that change right and so we'll just have to proceed as if it is what it is right then we won't be because we won't have that time to go back to the board and say you know what we need to need to make this change before we finish this process we won't be able to do that but sure sorry i used a strong language of motive but i i was really trying to get what you just said so uh i i wanted to introduce this sort of this new language to this conversation to say uh one of the reasons that at my understanding that the rubric is not part of the original motion is because it's it's fairly new and it's you know we're we needed to

150to have the committee also needs to have some flexibility to adjust that as the implementing the practice i think that um i think the the the example nikki that you used it was a very valid example but i think it states to the rigidity of how we implement practices and policies and i think what we are i think what the intention around uh the original motion is to not be uh rigid or as rigid intentionally so we can continue to work on an extremely extremely important step towards what we are trying to reach our goals around everything that we're trying to eat is already set the the language on a handbook of what we're trying to do is already set i think what's following that into the practice which is an area that mmsd has

151often struggled to implement because often because of the rigidity uh is is i think is what we were discussing so i i am in support of flexibility of really testing how this policy is going to impact uh our our staff and our community and ultimately our students thank you that kind of um of my own motion you've had your time i have my own motion on your own motion and now everybody gets to speak on it ollie has not spoken on christmas morning yeah so i think embedding the rubric in the handbook uh intensifies the issue in terms of how we're having this conversation in partnership with mti um and so we're making uh an additional alter alteration this evening to the to the handbook versus the guidance around how we operationalize practice um and

152i i don't think that that i'm not comfortable with that because that's not what we you know laid out in terms of what we were planning to do this evening i don't think we've given folks a fair uh chance to comment on the contribution of that board memo to the handbook um and so i i'm not comfortable voting for for that amendment at this time thank you i'll save you yeah thank you um i just want to say um i i i do hope at some point we stop referencing the staff member as a talking point in our arguments that person is much more than that one incident that transpired when we include the individuals with disabilities who've been fired due to disability then we will when we put individuals who are in wheelchairs uh

153when we put individual wheelchairs under the materials that's not true you're right i'm frustrated that's right i apologize and savia i apologize to you i sometimes let my chapter get the best of me and i do mean sincerely india i can't hear when when i'm so sorry nikki i can't hear when two people are talking i was just apologizing yeah i just i guess i'm frustrated by this conversation because i you know i wanted to start out the evening saying i really appreciate the work that's gone into this effort to look beyond seniority as a way to make our layoff and surplus decisions it's a monumental shift in what we're doing um in the traditional way we've decided this and the work has come a long way since last summer we've made a lot of

154progress so i do want to recognize deirdre and mti for the work that has been done on this um but to me just this discussion that we're having tonight indicates that we're not ready to do this like we're not i i feel like we have time and space to do a little bit more work on this and come back so everybody is ready this is the first time i've heard of the oversight committee and i don't know if i just missed that but i haven't i haven't heard of that piece of this process and so i feel like i'm finding out new information as we go and it's just it's a it's a little frustrating i i understand the the desire to put the the rubric in there i'm concerned that the rubric's still in

155a draft form so i'm not sure the way it's laid out right now is what we want to approve you know within the handbook and codify it tonight in in the draft form that it's in i'm not sure that's a good idea and so i i feel like we're we're kind of stuck here um debating the issues and doing the work that should be done in this collaborative process um not done by the seven board members and dr jenkins sitting at the table tonight and so um i i guess that's my comments for now and i'll i have some more comments to make as we get further in the process but i'm just frustrated that we're trying to to do this sort of it feels like on the fly um when it needs to be

156decided in a in another way thank you for your comments um really i just want to i just want to remind everyone the amount of time that we have spent not only as a board the district administration along with mti in talking about this this is not the first time i laid out how much time um 70 meetings between the district leadership and mti leadership since september 3rd 2020. we asked him to come to go back and meet again and come up with a an agreement okay there have been 23 friday friday mornings where the superintendent met one hour with mtr leaders there were 20 handbook meetings from october to march so i think you know we have to really think about and keep our students at the center particularly those students and who are

157most impacted by this decision right and we have to we have to recognize that there will never be a time when a union will come forward and give up seniority and so we're picking this apart because of one issue that's never going to change we will never get there we're picking this apart you know whether we do the whether we incorporate the uh rubric or not right because that's what the motion is on the floor right whether we do this or not we're going to if we if we don't vote tonight they're going to um meet again for another 50 70 times in the meantime as dr jekyll says how many kids are we willing to lose in the process right i mean we are uplifting cultural responsive teaching in our classrooms in the rubric

158that's important we should be elevating this and and i think that that is the direction that we need to build and then this decision is going to impact many um really positive movements forward um the tension right we have a lot of work to do this is not the only issue right this is not the only strategy this is part of a bigger strategy in moving our district forward and ensuring that we are committed to black excellence as we talked about earlier today and committed to not continuing to fail our black students and so the motion on the floor is to include the rubric um into um into this decision tonight so i'm going to reread this and then we're going to vote i moved at the board of education adopted modification to the mmsc

159employee handbook to include the rubric um the included rubric in the documents prepared for the agenda um item dated march 18 2021 um we got a second from chris carusi that was nikki's motion um and julia you're advising people yeah yeah julia had a hand up to speak and i think sherry did too okay um julia and then sherry did you have a clarifying did you want to type in uh i was just going to say i think i did but julia can go first oh thank you i think if we don't accept nikki's motion here we're voting to give full jurisdiction on live criteria for the foreseeable future to district administration and the oversight committee that's completely cutting off the board and mti so we're not going to have discussions like this in the

160future it's just going to be district administration and i think that's a bad move for mti and collaboration and all that stuff so i turn a key's motion from me junior it's hard to hear you i'm sorry should i speak a letter could you hear all that yeah louder please thank you okay um i was just saying if we don't accept nikki's amendment i think we're voting to give i mean full jurisdiction on layoff criteria for the whole foreseeable future district administration and these oversight committees and i think that's something that completely cuts off both the board and mti because that's their only way of speaking and i think that's a bad move so i'm definitely in favor of nikki's motion okay um sherry um just i want to make two clarifying points so i'm

161looking at the documents prepared for the board meeting tonight they indicate that the rubric is a draft sample are we voting on the draft sample is my question because then we're voting to put a draft sample in the handbook that's number one number two um i want to correct the perception that mti will not be involved if this is not in the handbook because as deirdre said they will be a part of the oversight committee and as a part of the oversight committee they will have part in any changes that need to be made to the han to this rubric so i think that um i think the nikki's um amendment um and as i read it it's not necessarily saying the draft the sample rubric can we vote on do we have permission as

162a board to vote on rubrics in general is that a question that was what i meant by the motion but i probably braced it about as badly as i could okay chris do you have something else um i just i want to echo what commencement said i've never seen this language about the oversight committee i wonder where it lives the oversight committee was we shared that information in several of the documents that we shared with the board over the last two weeks since march 8th it was in the faq and i believe it was in two follow-up documents that clearly delineated the oversight committee and who was going to be a part of that oversight committee which included central office mti leadership teachers etc um so it was in documents that was shared with you

163all uh it was something that was explicitly uh shared in the operations work group meeting i addressed it specifically in there um so it is not uh codified in uh the handbook language but it is in the documents that you that you've had uh that i've shared with you over the last month okay great okay let's go ahead and vote uh julia your advisory book hi and this is nikki's motion ali for foreign okay um back to the original motion i moved that the board of education adapted modification to the mmsc employee handbook i set forth in the documents prepared for the agenda items dated march 18 2021 effective july 1st 2021 okay second discussion yeah i want to acknowledge that there is a racialized dynamic that's part of this conversation and it's part of

164this greater conversation as we have it as a nation in our community and i think part of reconciling what we're talking about is acknowledging there are certain people whose identities are well represented within our faculty that you know there are certain people who can see them themselves reflected every step of the way when it comes to academia however i went to school here um and i never had an african-american teacher and that is something that i think we have to shift and you have to shift through change and through active change and i believe in the process and the work that both mti and our administration in particular like dr jenkins have done um to to move us to this place and this has not been a short process um but it has been a

165process that has been highly involved and that the board has been able to contribute to for months now um and so i i'm surprised at the lack of preparedness um to some extent that we seem to be discussing this evening um and i i'm surprised by the lack of conviction around changing processes that have resulted in our black faculty being the last hired in the first fire so i hope that that we can have have this conversation moving forward in good faith with one another yeah i just i just want to go back to the fact that you know we've gotten a lot of feedback on this and i just want to thank everyone from the community who's reached out to share their perspective on this i think this is a more nuanced issue than

166just simply if you vote yes you support equity and you vote no you support maintaining the status quo i think it's more nuanced than that i support the seniority plus changes um where more factors are considered in addition to seniority but there's still important implementation implementation details to be worked out and our discussion tonight shows that i believe more time is needed to find agreement closer to consensus i suggest we continue the collaborative process so the end date for the approval of this by the board isn't dictated by the final collaborative product and and not a timeline that we set um i just don't think this is ready um and we have the time and momentum to do this right i just need to speak yes where does rice play factor in highlands absolutely is

167this an issue absolutely there's one autistic individual on a school board in the whole damn nation that's me and i'll be damned if i am chastised and told i have a racialized agenda because of people who look like me when there's no one else like me on the gang country on the board that's not okay and that's not respect either i respect you ali i see you as a friend but that crosses the line then i cannot and will not accept i i need to say this to the entire board and we're not going to we are not going to get into the space of attacking ourselves are part of a racialized process it isn't and i'm not going to sit here and be called that is always perspective and this is my perspective i'm

168not going to sit around and be called that i've worked my butt off on anti-racism i'm not calling you anything i'm saying the process and i feel that i was speaking both to a historical relationality and a national reality and i wasn't speaking to you as an individual but you are speaking to me i'm going to respond we are not going to go back and forth on the floor like this please respect the process and we're not going to go back and forth on this now nikki um finish and then we'll move on very simply i feel that the ableism also needs to be addressed and i worry that with no disability peace on this on this rubric and no piece that discusses how we will monitor individuals with disabilities and those who teach them

169who could get lower scores that we are leaving out an entire class of people that terrifies me that we leave our english language learners because we don't talk about teachers who necessarily are ells that's also a major flaw if we're going to do it do it right thank you very much i do believe that uh within the rubric we do have language proficiency so that is addressed in there and we also have academic credentialing which also i believe includes special education but also you know it's just sorry um i believe that the most important form of intelligence in the world today is cultural intelligence and when we have these debates over objectivity versus subject activity it's important to know that our current conceptions of objectivity and of merit have traditionally favored the dominant culture which

170has exerted power over other cultures historically there's another component of this debate in terms of the barriers erected to the education profession for black and brown individuals we have to deal with that historical reality now the uh the conversation about how we diversify teachers in america it's got to be an all the above approach i don't think this is a silver bullet but um i am personally ready to get ready and moving i'm ready to act on this i'm ready to act on all the other things we have to do and i encourage us to do that no matter i vote tonight so my vote is green hey anybody that's just lucy thanks gloria so um i appreciate that everybody is speaking their truth i think that's important and i think we all need space

171to do that so um thanks for providing that opportunity um i think we have a lot of common grounds from a lot of common ground i think we all agree that we um that we need to ensure that our staff of color and particularly new staff of color feel welcome that they feel like they belong that they um feel like they aren't going to be moved around i think nobody thinks the status quo is okay i think we all agree on the need to center our students i think we all agree on the need for culture of responsive teaching and i think we all agree that we as a board have a responsibility to look at policies um through an anti-racist plans because that's the most you know powerful tool that we have to be

172an anti-racist board um i think it's good to like to state all that common ground because i think we have more in common than we have that divides us i think that's really important to acknowledge um job protections like seniority and this is not anything new that we're doing i mean these have long been singled out as a core problem in public education and if you look at places like the new orleans recovery school district they basically fired their entire teaching or laid off their entire workforce rehired without seniority as a lens and it ended up reducing diversity in the new orleans public schools so it's not a panacea it's not a silver bullet it's a tool that we're looking at at mmsg but i think we have to acknowledge that this may not lead

173us to the end that we want to get to um at the end of the day um we are trying to support our new staff of color and that's really important we're also doing that by reducing job security we haven't seen any data on layoff and surplus particularly if we could see it correlated to staff retention to actually know get a sense from data if this is going to work or not and that concerns me you know i do appreciate that the retention data that we were given but we haven't been given any surplus data um related to staff of color or any information about if we know if there's any kind of a correlation between um surplus in particular because i don't think we've really had many layoffs and retention um i think we

174also need to acknowledge that job security and strong unions are good for children and the staff who teach them and serve them job security protects people who otherwise might face retribution for calling out injustices or inequities or other issues or working conditions in our schools as one of our speakers attested many mmsd staff are already afraid to speak up in some of our buildings we do have a culture on mmsb where many of our staff of color don't feel safe speaking up about things that they see and i think we need to make sure that if we move ahead with changes that we're actually trying to protect people who speak out against problems and try to make things better in this district um there's scant evidence that professional development successfully addresses implicit bias and yet

175we're saying we're going to give our principles a pd and that will take care of any biases that might come into play with implementing this rubric i'm concerned that that's not going to work in every building with every principal who does these evaluations and i'm particularly concerned about the possibility of many of our women staff which is the bulk of our staff possibly you know if they threaten a strong male leader in their building they could get a little rating those kinds of biases come into play and i think we have to be sensitive as we look at these rubrics that we're making sure that discrimination doesn't happen inadvertently because of the subjectivity um retention of staff particularly staff of color is a growing problem in this district and i deeply appreciate deirdre that you

176have called out that this is a multifaceted problem and this one change isn't going to take care of it um i'm really concerned however that making this unilateral handbook change sets a negative precedent for working collaboratively with mti and with the administration towards our goal of being an anti-racist district this is the first time that this board will make a unilateral change to the handbook and i'm worried it's it could become a precedent to continue to make changes without mti and without admin without parents and students acting as a team together to try to get to our goals as a district and i think we need to be really conscious of the fact that we're making a very strong decision here about equity but we're also breaking precedent in terms of working in solidarity and

177as a team with our staff and their parent and with others um right now that's not the case but right now we're not working at solidarity with everything and that concerns me as we move forward on other really important changes and issues in this district that will help us move towards our goals of anti-racism um we've been told that we will not reach reach agreement with mti and i disagree with that um i know that we've had multiple meetings with mti uh i've heard different things about how many others are actually very much focused on the surplus of language versus more general handbook conversations um i really believe that um we need to build on the collaborative handbook process that was put in place years ago and use that strong foundation to work together for

178change um i i am concerned that moving forward unilaterally works against that need um and therefore i will be going against these underwater unilateral changes to the teacher campus as much as i agree that we can't continue with the status quo i disagree with the process thank you yeah you know on the issue issue of job protection i really do understand that concern especially if you are an older seth you know that would be black or brown and you're outspoken and seniority has protected you what if you're young steph of color is outspoken and you're subject to surplus every year because of random fluctuations in student enrollment what job security do you have also this helps us with one of the most important strategies of retaining staff of color which is clustering folks at specific

179schools but if we have a surplus process that's basically only on seniority then if you're a self of color that's clustered at a school where you feel part of that welcome environment and you get surplus to a school that's not as good what does that do to your career trajectory do you want to stay with this district so i feel like this process this change will give us more power to strategize on how we uh build supportive environments at specific schools do we have uneven building leadership yes we do but we can take that problem on as well in terms of holding principles accountable so i think we have to wait into this humans have you know on the issue of objectivity and subjectivity humans have the hour of discernment and to exercise judgment that's

180what we're going to have to do especially when it comes to waiting out these oppressive cultures and systems that impact our children we have to wade into this so much president gloria i wanted to first share my immense gratitude from the work that deidra and sherry and the entire team have done to get to where we are now um certain things that i have heard my colleagues say that they haven't seen are were things that we actually asked them to do uh and they have done uh so it feels confusing to me that we're we're still sort of teasing so many things apart um i wanted to agree with my colleague nikki it is it is extremely hurtful uh to be someone that um is is the only person right i'm sure it is really

181hurtful to anyone that has been the first on anything the first woman the first person of color the first black person the first person with disabilities so i i i sympathize with that nikki uh and i do find that to be a a pretty uh compelling argument that you have um there's there are other arguments there are other oppressions that are being played out uh specifically to you know you know with us you know in our board uh gloria was uh elected uh the first latina uh on the board uh when uh so many of our students identify with the with the same identity as her we were the first or only school board in the entire state of wisconsin and probably one of the few in the entire country that we're all led by

182women so we you know we we know a thing or two about uh being being one and being tokenized or being sort of made into an exemplary what is also really interesting is that currently our leadership both in the board with dr jenkins the team and hr and now with mti wu have the blackest leadership of all times in madison and is extremely exciting to see and it comes with what we're experiencing now this challenge of speaking to racialized dynamics and not having a common uh common language to speak to those things we also have a legacy to have entrusted mostly white leadership both at the board level and to the district level which has led us to be in a deep-rooted inequities that we see in our data so much that have numb so

183many people that so many folks now see numbers and not see that there are so many children that this district has failed um i want to speak to the horror stories that i shared as a mother in this district that many people that look like me share in the district many other parents of color many other black parents have experience in our district and how those injustices will continue to live because we haven't uh had the courage or the capacity to address them them when when the time was done i have also heard many terror stories from staff from staff of color and teachers of color i wanted to remind you all i was a staff of color in the central office not that long ago so i have my own terror stories uh i

184also have uh i hold dear so many stories of so many teachers that were not only just not supported by central office but also their own union uh and so let me just talk a little bit about the union because our union has also shifted quite a bit i think the union that we have in 2021 is a very very different union that we had in 2011 and that says a lot still all the things that we are uh proud of to be accomplishing today or be who we are today uh still have the the the sort of the nostalgia perhaps or the rooted uh the deep roots of the the pervasiveness of white supremacy and that is also something to be said the aim for perfect perfectionism which i have heard a little bit

185before in this meeting and other meetings is deeply rooted into this practice i appreciate folks wanting to uh to get things to to the to to as right as possible to our students and as right as possible to our to our staff uh but it's important to know that that is a that is a white uh a whiteness it's a symptom of whiteness and we're not gonna get to that perfection tonight and we're not gonna get to the addressing all the inequities tonight as as deidre has reminded us over and over again to the languages that have been used uh around unilateral decision uh and through even language that we were uprooting what scott walker have started which is language that i'm extremely familiar as someone that has had a mischaracterization of my intentions to

186run for this office into 2013 that that narrative that was also supported by many mti staff and many mti leadership staff is also at play in this conversation i think that when groups of people don't reach consensus which is a really really hard thing to accomplish and then one group decides to move something forward it's not a unilateral decision it's just to say we haven't be able to mute consensus but here's our best uh recommendation based on the many discussions that we have and that's the fact that has happened in the situation given the data that we have seen um i also wanted to um talk about our ability to get into this change it's not an easy space to be it's extremely new dynamic for many of us many of us have never followed

187leadership of color and we have the first latina as our president many of us have not taken uh the the credentials of black staff as as something to be valued instead to be questioned that has happened also both in many comments from what we have heard and he has played out in the staff i wanted to state again that having full support of this amazing leadership that is forming that has formed both with all of you my colleagues and also what we have put forward in our and as a district and i know we are not making it everything right with our mti staff and so there's so many opportunities for what is really a true collaborative approach we haven't reached that place collaboration is not just something when that happens when we need to

188make a decision collaborate is an ongoing practice so we haven't got to that place uh supporting our staff is not just when we are uh going and voting for for salary increases or this and that uh supporting our staff is supporting our staff and it's also acknowledged how so many staff has not been been supported in particular our staff of color and our district i am for change i don't know if every change that we're going to make and what we're going to vote and i can't guarantee that all of them are not going to have an unintended consequence and i wanted to continue to talk in those terms what are some of the unintended consequences for our votes tonight and our continue the things that we're going to continue to make decision on because

189they exist ableism racism white supremacist is deeply rooted in everything that we talk about and that's important for all of us to acknowledge and that we should not be afraid to say that because we cannot change and i share that uh with with michael jones earlier today we cannot change something that we don't deeply know about and acknowledging that the space that we are is important for us to get to that change thank you so much president reyes for your leadership and this and your leadership throughout your entire term i'm extremely humble to be serving with you thank you so much dr jenkins and your entire team for your bold moves and i really appreciate taking a little bit more time to express uh the deep gratitude for all this work and also uh where

190we are this this this complicated uh conflictuous time that we are and i trust that we're gonna continue to move forward in order to support our students um and centering their lives their hearts their brilliance thank you so much thank you another for your words um in your compassion and just centering us on what is so important really just bringing us back to our why um we have gone down this world and so i appreciate the words um chris did you have something else that saw me yeah i just i i want to thank dr jenkins for your world leadership since you've been here we are we are moving in the right direction like i said we have made progress on this and i am more optimistic than you gloria i feel like there is

191room for more collaboration and more progress to be made on this i guess my question my clarifying question for deirdre is we've already approved temporary surplus language for this year so is are the changes that we make today going to affect what happens for next year for surplus sorry this language change that you have before you is meant to be effective july 1 of 2021 so it will um impact surplus and layoff for the next school year so it won't impact what we're doing this spring for either our may deadline or we've already moved through the surplus process correct for this year okay then from my perspective i feel like we do have a little bit more time um to get to consensus and that's that's why i'm having a struggle with this because i

192i feel like there is more room and more time um to work out some of the details on this um thank you chris and then just to clarify that um you know i appreciate all the work that mti has done um they themselves have been significantly compared to vmta that i remember around their anti-racism work when i said that i was i'm not as optimistic about them moving forward on some new as a membership um seniority um i know as being a former union member is very very important and i think but if we haven't gotten there yet after all this time even though 10 20 even 50 like if we would have you know come to 50 you know it was time and seniority is really um the challenge here and i just don't

193um think that it's any more time would have gotten moved us around somebody and so um that was why i'm not optimistic of that and i think we're still going to go around in circles and talk about something and i think you know i mean really i think uh chris pearson said that we all want the same thing right and it's just getting there right i mean some of us are focused on process some of those time um but what this board has done and has done really well at is moved during and make some significant changes during some critical times and um it's not always going to be it is when we're breaking through systems um you know this is what it looks like it's messy it's not going to be perfect when we

194are tackling um these historical [Music] systems rooted in racism it's going to be messy and so i think moving forward you have to recognize that it's bored we're not always going to agree um and but what we're doing is not working and we have to really recognize and look at the data of our black kids their black and brown kids and keep them at the center right while also supporting and ensuring that we are promoting the diversity of teachers and staff within their schools because we know that by research that that helps and so we just need to really keep that in the center in all the decisions that we and so i think we had a really robust conversation thank you everybody for really being true um to your thoughts and yourselves and and

195bringing everything um to the table and we're going to go for a vote of course i see your hand up just i have a quick question before we vote my question is for dr jenkins and dr jenkins this question is just a heartfelt question it isn't and if you can't answer it today it's totally okay but um as i said before i firmly believe that admin mti and the board need to move together in our our mission to become an anti-racist school district and i'm just wondering what your thoughts are about how we can improve the collaborative handbook process moving forward so we're never again in the position of having to make unilateral changes to achieve that goal i think that's a fair question i think in order to answer it we have to be

196really willing to go and reflect deeply even while we're here i think all the comments that you guys have made lead to it i think day one in the interview i talked about the historical wrong and i talked about it on the campaign trail when we did the referendum there are historical wrongs to african americans latinx special needs poor white children and ell children i think this conversation says no i want to get there i've had a conversation with mti and let me tell you i'm a big union supporter they know that we aren't there to increasing the percentage there for seniority and i think in order for us to get there and go forward we have to date the dating is in one way and we have to wrestle with those things that we

197don't like about one another and that are historically wrong to continue to perpetuate really anti-blackness which began with the inception of this country and we have to talk about it we're going to have to live in truth moving forward and there will be times when we all are do you think i'm going to come in and be in this space but when i looked at madison because i was perfectly fine madison said we're going to focus on black children and youth ensuring that they excel you look across the country that is unique and i asked when i came here i said oh we're going to be an anti-racist district for real because that was what was professed and i said what does it look like what does it feel like what does it taste like

198that means doing some tough work we will survive this i'm going to walk with mti and with the board with this community after whatever happens and i think us coming back to the table chris after this that would be more tough to see we have years years of this level of thinking that has truly programmed us all to a way that we've come accustomed to and if we're gonna dismantle it we're gonna have to be willing to value all human beings i'm sitting here still frustrated tonight about the attack on the asian americans in our country and we all should be frustrated just outraged i'm talking about the lgbtq community particularly african americans are attacked like at levels you would not believe we should all be outraged so what is it going to take it's

199going to take us look at one another face to face sitting down and agreeing we're not coming out until we can agree but agreeing isn't going one way and sometimes i feel a bit insulted being a teacher at heart you know we have to work together but i'm really concerned about our children we're in a state with the number one and if you want to say disparities and not just disparities in academic outcome but when you start looking at our birth rate for our african-american children what happens here with health care and i think a sit down chris and really saying are you committed to doing this and being an anti-racist individual are you really committed to seeing whatever privilege that you may have been given being at birth a bit acquired wealth again whatever

200choices you've made that if i'm a human being you're a human being and we're going to treat you as such so i'm willing to sit down tomorrow i will cancel my schedule okay and talk to mti or whomever but i also say we can get better when we include parents in the community in our discussions and that's how we continue to dismiss our children are not performing how they could before and they're not going to be socially emotionally mentally healthy if we continue with this device i sit here and i feel bad i heard julian comments and her comments almost broke my heart more than anything you know i want you all to reflect on her colors when we leave and that shows you where we need to go through the lands of a child

201not the adults that's that's what i believe all right um julia your advisory book i'd like to just say something before my vote if i can go ahead if you can just speak up yeah can i can i say something before my vote yeah why okay thanks um i just wanted to say i i appreciate everyone who's spoken on this i think everyone has good intentions here and i have i mean yeah the student voice is important here and i have talked to a lot of students about this issue from different schools different backgrounds and a lot of them i mean i think almost every student has recognized the importance of getting away from that 100 seniority um as a criterion but as all the students i've talked to also have pretty significant uh problems

202with this rubric um you know ranging from from my being a effective way of measuring teachers and from learning goals and having district administrators go in and watching teachers being the best way to you know measure whether or not they should be laid off and um i think from that i mean there's a lot of you know individual things here that everyone's discussed a lot already so i'm not going to go through them all but most the students i have talked to don't like this rubric and i think because of uh because the board just kind of signed away all opportunities we might have to address these criteria in the future and sign them away to the oversight committee which i don't think we've had really enough time to talk about um so i'm not

203gonna be able to support that um just because the students i've talked to don't like the rubric as it is and the board's not gonna have the opportunity to revisit it so i wish that was different but yeah so that's what i have to say forever my vote nay um you wrote me yep okay first name motion passes okay next we are going to move on to the consent agenda um i'm going to go ahead and read the knee motion and then ask if there are any separations i move that the board of education dropped and approved all of the motion set forth in section 10 of the electronic agenda prepared for the march 22nd 2021 regular school board meeting exactly as said motions are written by voting affirmatively on the on this motion a

204board member expresses his or her affirmative goal on each of the motions consolidated divided subject to leads or separations that have been made by any member of the school board second saving on second any um separations i'd like to separate fourteen ten point fourteen universe ten point fifteen ten point fifteen any others okay separate ten fourteen ten fifteen julia you remind yourself hi all right all those in favor let's do willpower are we hi hi nikki hi mickey i i press first i i save me on i i moved at the board of education approved an expenditure of funds for the city of madison madison parks to lease space to mmsd at the oman park building located at 320 east lake side street madison consisting of the entire west wing of the building at 18

205440 square feet plus 1 239 square feet in the east wing for a total of 19 679 square feet with a 400 000 capital contribution and an estimated annual lease amount between 65 000 and 000 over a potential 25 year term can i get a second chris um and discussion like this so um the reason i pulled this is first it's a really exciting opportunity and i want to make sure we lift it up um we've found a facility to move mscr into when we move out of point and it's right on the water and it's beautiful and i was wondering if somebody could just say a few words about the fact that even though we have added a rental expense for a new facility for mscr how this might open up new opportunities um

206for both our community to enjoy all that mscr has to offer and also to possibly generate some revenue from new activities and opportunities absolutely thank you chris i see janet just turned her screen on so i will defer to our amazing leader hey janet you're on mute sorry about that thanks for the question um mscr has done a really good job of serving most of the community not so much south madison and i think that this new location is an opportunity for us to do a better job of serving a part of madison that we traditionally haven't done a great job of serving so we're excited about that opportunity um in terms of um fundraising there will be a need to do some fundraising in order to bring the facility to exactly where mscr needs

207it to be over the next few years um and look forward to conversations with that moving forward with with my team and with kelly and the board okay anything else anything else yes i do want to echo uh chris's sentiment and i also want to thank kelly for her work in uh creating this partnership with the city i think this is exactly kind of the work that we want to see um the district of the city doing in which we're utilizing the parks and the lake and providing pretty tremendous opportunities for our young people in collaborating um across government bodies so thank you so much for your work kelly um and thank you to everybody on the city side of this who has uh really found a way to you know do what's best for

208our entire community while supporting our young people and centering our young people all right okay um julia your advisory board i crystal schmidt hi um chris commissioner hi all right motion passes thank you all uh 10 15. i believe that the board of education approved a purchase of 30 tents to create flexible outdoor this is the one yes flexible tents to create flexible outdoor elementary school classrooms from matthew's tent rental in the amounts of 77 million 500 and six thousand fifty sorry seventy seven thousand five hundred i mean seventy seven thousand oh my god 150 with funding from the 20 20 21 building service local pullman 19 budget chris yes i just wanted to um pull this out to highlight the the creative problem solving around needing flexible outdoor spaces for learning um and thank

209you for figuring this out for the elementary schools i would like to encourage us um to look to do this at our middle schools and our high schools as well but as we bring grad co-curriculars other activities that are going on in our schools um we're also going to need more spaces um whether you're thinking of music or theater or all the things that happen in our in our school buildings it would provide more spaces so in addition to approving this i'm just going to encourage us to look further um towards doing it for middle school in high school too and i don't know if chad can speak to if that's possible or not do you have a specific question for chad yeah middle school in high school thank you chad yeah you're welcome uh

210sir i can certainly speak to that we you know kelly and i went back and forth with janet on this proposal uh and we can still have some tents uh this summer if we decide to go in that direction the fact that we're going to own these assets and we'll have to store them and in the future likely you know enable our grounds crew to set them up and take them down on an annual basis and still have to kind of just do a district-wide assessment to figure out where they go um ended up in a spot that we thought this was a good place to start so chris to your point it is a starting point and we'll certainly take your feedback into consideration and certainly think that there are other locations throughout the

211district uh that will make for you know advantageous for outdoor learning spaces so thank you for the feedback all right thanks chad all right juliet yeah i just want to speak to the fact that we have talked about play-based learning and outdoor learning a lot i have um definitely asked that that be part of our plan for reopening so i'm incredibly grateful to see this i'm also grateful to see this echo some of what we're doing with mscr in terms of echo ecologically relevant experiences for our learners um so thank you christopher for pulling this and speaking to expanding it um at the middle school and high school level all right julian you advise your will hi hi holly hi hi i'm nikki i'm chris hi chris i see you hi samia chris commissioner hi

212first punishment hi amanda hi hi gloria hi motion passes um other reports to the board um study of medicine education thank you so much president reyes i'm really excited to inform that that committee is getting a lot of energy we have narrowed down our priorities and really propose to focus on what we're calling a bucket of work that we're calling digital equity that's going to create a comprehensive intentional partnership with city and the county and uh elder evers have uh is proposing uh that committee to to be a to actually be a task force uh that's going to be sort of continue the work that the digital city community has has begun to making sure that um every uh part of our city students and and families can uh access uh which is really exciting

213we they have uh other evers have uh requested a recommendation to serve in that committee a school board member and i'm putting forward the name of savian castro our dear esteemed colleague uh due to the fact that he's sharp on policy then can make sort of a weave between that the worker the committee uh and also the work uh that he's being developed from the policy level thank you so much everyone student senate yes uh i just wanted to highlight the work of the student senate anti-racism committee which has been working on analyzing their survey responses with the help of the district's research team so they put out a survey based on students perception of inclusiveness of curriculum and student-centered belonging in classes and how they believe that teachers perceive them so they're working on

214getting those results and they're very excited about that so i just wanted to highlight them hey thank you julian um until we can meet in person because the virtual it's not working as well so um janet and i have decided along with the group that we will start meeting june is when our first meeting is scheduled thank you all right um other business uh tax incremental district tip number 36 i move that the board of education direct chris parisi as the board representative on the tax incremental finance board to vote in support of tid number 36 capitals of gateways second nicki minaj second discussion chris do you want to explain more yeah i'd be happy to explain a little bit i'm just in very very broad terms um this amendment to um frees up some

215of the tax increment to pay for the new public market that will be invested the cons to the board is that it extends the life of the tid which means it's going to be longer until the property comes back on the tax rules i think about nine years longer however there's many many pros to this proposition the public market will add to the value of the property it's going to create a business incubator that will benefit many many members of our community who are interested in food businesses in particular and sustainable food businesses it will provide a certified kitchen small business support it's it's a great opportunity for families in our district to start you know businesses and jobs around food it's also an opportunity for students in the district to be able to use

216the facility to do the same thing to learn about food as a way to generate income um to learn how to work with food to learn about a food business so i think um despite the fact that the land will be off the tax fields a little bit longer the throws far outweigh the cons so there's many more details in the memo and kelly can also answer you know if you really want to know the details about the increment difference and things like that how do you answer questions i like that business in career yeah thank you thank you chris i think this is an excellent opportunity for the school district to um support the public market um i was in actually in the mayor's office when um the mayor paul solomon initiated the planning

217market and um it's definitely needed um and for all the reasons outlined in support of small businesses um women horn businesses minority-owned businesses and it's just brings so much uh to our community we come into our city and so i'm happy that we're able to provide support to the city um to initiate this so thank you chris for your work um recommendation um and uh julian you're right hi hi ali hi ali i nikki oh nikki i chris i here's i say dm hi sadie and i christopher schmidt hi uh school breakfast program resolution i move that water a proposed resolution urging wisconsin state legislature to support annual funding for statutory reimbursement and participating school districts in this full breakfast program at 15 cents per breakfast as set forth from the document prepared for the

218right way for the board of education due to march 22 2021. second nicki minaj second i think this is really important and enthusiastic about supporting it and i want to give my um wholehearted thanks to irene polish for bringing this forward to us um thank you so much for uh making sure that um feeding our kids and being able to pay for better quality food for our kids is part of our agenda so you know happy to have a kid for us yeah definitely thank you to irene um polish mmc lee cook at long road and president-elect of sna wisconsin for sending us this resolution if passed she will send this on to our local legislators along with the other districts passing the resolution madison is the fourth school district to vote on the resolution

219so far so thank you for your value julia your advisor hi julia i ali motion passes a self-insured workers compensation resolution i knew that the board of education approved a proposed resolution re-establishing the mmsd self-insured workers compensation program and set forth and document prepared for where the board of education will be due to march 22nd 2020 chris clear c second e discussion hey julia your advisor hope i'm julia i ali hi mickey hi mickey i chris hi chris i sabian hi [Music] west high school project and fundraising putting motion number one there are um free motions here so let's start with one putting students in schools at the center i move to align all school and any related complementary facilities referendum projects funded by fundraising campaigns or district resources onto a uniform fundraising training therefore

220via resolve that all previously approved fundraising campaigns and future approved fundraising campaigns along with any internally funded efforts at the schools will henceforth have a fundraising milestone check-in with the board in june 2021 and that all funds for all facility projects above and beyond funding projects are to be secured by september 6th 2021. audi second any discussion on this um julia your valuable hi motion passes motion number two i move that the board of education accepted project proposal from west high school to one accept plans to upgrade the athletics facilities to add a new recreational indoor running track expanded athletics addition and exercise physical activity space above and beyond the investments and commitments approved through the 2020 facility referendum proposal two accept uh through pre-approval of up to five million in donations through the foundation

221for madison's public schools no later than september 6 2021 and this action is taken based on the understanding that west fundraising must meet the fundraising milestone with cash in hand in order for the project to continue by the deadlines noted in the tax presentation materials for the regular meeting dating march 2nd 2021. can i get something except christmas second discussion first of all yeah i just wonder if you can hear a little bit from karen and how this has changed in in the proposal that initially came from us um and just wanted to say that i appreciate the reflection um and going back to the community and coming back at us with what seems like a sort of a scale down and more i don't want to say more reasonable but um yeah a different

222proposal i can talk to this i'm going to move away from remarks it's a late it's a late evening so i'm just going to say this is what we did we we took a look at maximizing um our existing space we looked at feasibility we looked at cost we looked at the impact for the region community we looked at the impact um for the communities outside region across the city we also looked at how this particular facility the addition of the expanded suspend the expanded athletic addition via a suspended running track elevator stairwells and the bonus room really maximize the space that has been already provided by the 2020 referendum we looked very very carefully um we um we're happy to talk about and i would like to talk about what we eliminated and why

223but in this particular pace excuse me in this particular instance we believe it really maximizes our potential to increase instructional athletic and recreational space and alicia if you want to talk a little bit about the equity aspects of this with respect to space utilization by your students in the community [Music] yeah i had a hard time hearing this are you having a hard time hearing me yeah now i can hear you a minute ago i couldn't okay i turned it over to alicia pelton um who's in arizona and um has been driving around the desert so um i'm hoping she landed alicia are you there i'm here excellent um thanks karen uh dr buran but so after spending the last few months investigating the best use of space i i too uh can you hear

224me yes okay i am i found a spot hey i am i am here okay so um thank you do you have the yeah can you hear us can you yeah am i good now yes okay so so after spending the past few months investigating the best use of space i um i too believe the diligence of the mmsd staff and the architects have reached a really creative and effective design of every inch of the last of west potential space so i'm really quite excited about what we've come down to do as i mentioned last month at the time i took the ad position i was the ninth athletic director in four years so i was aware that west needed some stability and someone to help sort out those issues and yes there are some

225issues over there but issues have solutions so in all of my equity work over these years the best advice that i've been given is to come every day with some fresh eyes to see through a lens that doesn't have precept filters so after my two years i learned a lot about west community that i had not heard about different from the larger perceptions that are held from many so the biggest one is really dealing with a lack of space i found it causes a lot of tension between athletics coaches the custodians facility staff family school staff and mscr but really more importantly is that lack of space means that we miss opportunities for the students in the community few athletic spaces at west um and we have le almost less than half are at west

226that actually participate on site most of them are off-site in isolated training and game sites it just really creates a lot of obstacles and barriers for west students to participate and i'm not talking about all students because we have and we all know it many students and families that are resourceful and easily scale the obstacles but unfortunately that can't hide the issues to the casual eye um so we focus on what we can see we tend to see the tip of the iceberg and not what lies below and and this is something we need to address is what this incremental space these three lanes of the pool the the suspended track and the and that fitness room um does is really addresses that otherwise we really just exasperate the opportunity gaps for under under resource

227students who often have fewer resources to navigate their way through these obstacles of practice times transportations locations and even things just not being offered they miss out on all those benefits of athletics and fitness team community when activities can't be on site or after school or can't even be offered at all so this is the moment this is when we will have the only opportunity to not only build some athletic facilities to meet some of the space demands of our 2300 students in the greater community but to look how we can creatively take advantage of this one build of a lifetime to best serve our community since this building is using the last of the available land our community at west has really excited the possibility to have this additional space that can be used

228for large group and movement activities and gives us enormous value i i along with others took the time to research myself because i really wanted it done right and the best way to be creative and innovative in a space since we only have so much and so i traveled around wisconsin and minnesota and i to look at facilities and build outs and the most common themes whether they're from inner city schools or their suburban areas that are just massive like d3 colleges or suspended tracks cross-course pools and multi-purpose spaces the incredible return of investment on what such an incremental expense was pushed by each school's a.d i visited with not only does it open more opportunities for recreational sports but you know it cuts down on rental fees and transportation costs for swim and track

229it pulls dance cheer events and other gatherings off the courts like the other three high schools already have with their dance rooms to open up courts for recreational sports activities and mscr leagues and non-leagues that will better serve our diverse community it will offer safe space for special needs students and physical therapy students to move around instead of the busy overcrowded hallways it currently uses pe students will have more swimming classes and fitness classes and walking space even the staff will benefit from using the track during the day with mscr leaving the neighborhood due to the transition of white to capital high west needs to play a greater role as the anchor of our community and adding on additional space even the small amount proposed this evening including expand the expanding the pool but just

230three lanes will add value and return on return of investment to both our west students and the community so to share a little bit more of a personal in-depth information on what public doesn't always see is is i'm going to hand it over to corvon gaines who is a west alum a basketball coach and the coordinator of student engagement thank you again alicia um and thanks everyone for being here today and taking the time to listen to our proposal um like she stated my name is corvin gaines i'm a 2008 graduate from madison west i've been a part of the region of families since 1995 starting with my siblings so wes is definitely near and dear to my heart being a former student athlete and now working in the building as a staff member and

231coach i see the bigger picture of what our students are facing on a daily basis i'm constantly reminding our students that we know we don't have enough space to practice uh but that is something that's out of our control and you know what we only can control what we can so as regents we are forced to have that resilient mindset to always push forward no matter what but that means i'm telling my students that they need to work 10 times harder than a student at another high school just to get the same practice opportunities and that's not fair and our students travel to other schools just to practice or compete so they can see and feel the inequities as well due to the lack of space most of our freshmen wait hours after practice to

232start because we don't have enough space for everyone since some students don't have the luxury of going home and eating before breakfast i mean eating before practice we are now trying to hold a practice for a ton of teenagers who haven't ate since lunch and we expect them to go out there and be ready to perform practice and compete against other schools who have well-spaced areas with the late practice now students are now catching the metro bus which gets them home between 9 30 and 10 30 and they still have to eat dinner then those same students have to wake up at 5 am to get ready to catch the bus at 6 45 which will get them out west at 8 am and then those same exact students who just went through all that

233we expect them bright and early in the morning to engage in their academics this takes a big toll on overall well-being mentally physically with the added space we're hoping to fundraise our athletes will have the opportunity for reasonable gen time practice space and availability which will have a direct impact on their well-being where students who participate in mscr activities are also met with inequalities due to space i've seen them walk in a great distance in blizzards or freezing cold temperatures to the hoyt building just to have practice since wes has no extra space for our students who participate in mscr this barrier means less students are taking place in those opportunities in other schools so if we have the space and availability for more practice and activities to take place at west our students of

234color would have more opportunities to invest their time in community programs activities and be a part of a team to feel some sense of belonging however west academic opportunities do not outweigh our need for sufficient fa space for students to talk to partake in wellness activities if we are given the opportunity to fundraise for our space we are promising we hope for to further diversify our student athlete community and continue to meet our student athletes needs to compete at a high level so and this is what i see and hear from our students on every on everyday basis at west high school so i want to pass it to janet dyer another committee member thank you mr gaines i'm happy to be here to offer continued support for the west high high school capital campaign

235and the positive impact it will have on mscr i'll be brief um a lot that i wanted to say has already been said um but i do want to um to just say as was shared by many others and with the board last month um as well as included in the west equity guidance tool mscr has not been able to provide equitable opportunities in recreational sports programming for west high school students in comparison to the other comprehensive high schools and mscr access to west high school for community programs such as swimming lessons and sports leagues is very limited additional athletic courts would give west students the same opportunities as other mmsd high school students without having to travel for practice and they would have the opportunity to embrace the pride that comes with hosting athletic

236events on your home court mscr would also be in a better position to serve the west madison community in the community at large with additional courts for community basketball volleyball badminton and more and as was mentioned earlier as the hoyt building transitions to capitol high school thank you to all of our community members who voted for that i'm very excited for that opportunity for high school students but mscr will not have the same level of access to the gym at hoyt um for programs like adult fitness and our very very popular 50 plus goodman rotary fitness programs so it is with a tremendous amount of excitement that we anticipate providing some of that programming in the proposed fitness studio or bonus space that is proposed as well as the track we would definitely be able

237to not only serve those community members that participate in programming seven days a week maybe up to 10 hours a day at hoyt if we can pick some of that programming up at west as well as our new mscr location on lakeside street i just wanted to say a couple of comments about the pool while a warm water pool would have gone a long ways in eliminating some of the wait list that we have for our aquatics programs for individuals with disabilities for infants for older adult adults for those people with arthritis that need a warm water pool to exercise it is something that mscr would support at another time perhaps on another west side location however the the new proposal for the pool upgrade would definitely enable us to reduce some of our wait

238list for swimming lessons and for some of our community-based swim programs for low-income communities that access the other swimming pools in our high schools so we're excited about that opportunity as well and before i turn things back over to principal buran i'd like to thank the board for their consideration and i also like to thank the west high school team for including mscr in every step of this process both now and moving forward thank you great thank you for um thank you for this it's very helpful um do any other board members have any questions before we take a vote okay um thank you everybody thank you all uh julia your advisory book hi hi um hi mickey i first i first i'm savion hi baby and i say hi um hi [Music] except one

239two one accept plans upgrade upgrade uh the referenda base scope eight lane pool and diving well to a cross force 25 yard by 25 meter pool diving well above and beyond the investments and commitments provided approved through the 2020 facility referendum proposal to accept through a pre-approval up to 2.5 million in donations through the foundation for medicines public schools public school public schools no later than september 6 2021 and the action is taken based on the understanding that west fundraising must meet the fundraising milestone with cash in hand in order for the project to continue by the deadlines noted in the attack presentation materials for the regular meeting dated march 22 2021. can i get a second any discussion chris um so i just want to point out that i think with if we approve

240this the um the fundraising approvals for west and memorial and the investments we made in east are all basically in the same ballpark and so i'm looking forward to when we can schedule time to talk about how we're going to make similar investments in the lothalic community and i just want to once again reiterate my gratitude to you to you gloria and ollie and dr jenkins for reaching out to that community and making sure that we're here in that community and what they need in their schools because um these investments we're making at all of our high schools are really about the community they're not just about the school and we need to invest in all of our communities around the city so thanks so much for getting that conversation okay um julia you're valuable

241thanks uh i thank you all thank you for coming tonight um looking forward to you know all of our schools right it's just it's an exciting time um and can i get a move to adjourn okay yeah check it out okay motion passes we are adjourned thank you all for your work thank you thank you gloria [Music] um